


Pilgrimage and Progress

by Philosophizes



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, M/M, Magic, Nobility
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-20
Updated: 2016-01-30
Packaged: 2018-05-08 00:32:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 21
Words: 50,196
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5476358
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Philosophizes/pseuds/Philosophizes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Winter Prince decides to go on pilgrimage to the High Temple of the Sun in Zaloto. Naturally, he has to make an Entourage out of it, and bring his court-in-waiting along, because it's not like anybody's going to let Ivan Braginski brave the strange and backwards lands beyond the taiga <i>by himself</i> for a year, no matter if he was a general before he got elected or not.</p><p>Ludwig, the Prince's head official, had been anticipating nothing much more than the usual headaches of long-term travel and diplomatic visits- but he hadn't realized <i>just</i> how stark the cultural differences would be. </p><p>Between one of his guards being a famous southern mage who ran from the incessant wars of the lands beyond the taiga, and himself going unaccountably mushy over a pretty singer in dire straits, it's turning into a pretty difficult and dangerous year.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Ivan Braginski was elected Winter Prince after the traditional five years’ wait from the ascension of the new Winter King, Yao. The entire country was quietly pleased- he’d been popular as the Winter General, and Krasnivya was flourishing even more than usual under its perpetual peace, so no one was very concerned about losing the General of their admittedly small military to the Red Palace.

Ludwig Beilschmidt, Court Magnate of the Second Degree, was personally very pleased by King Yao’s decision. He’d been apprenticed to King Surinder- who’d reigned before King Yao- for ten years, starting in his early teens; and when King Surinder’s term had been up, King Yao had put him on retainer to Ivan as a royal observer, indicating the General’s favored status. Completing that job had promoted him from Third Degree to Second Degree, and when Ivan came into his position ten years from now, he’d become First Court Magnate and earn a seat in the Advisory.

Of course, he had the second-best thing to being on the Advisory now- he was Ivan’s personal retainer and confidant. He’d won more than a promotion those five years away from the Red Palace.

He and Ivan, and the others who made up the Prince’s Court and would one day hold their own fifteen-year Advisory seats, were spending the last sunny night of the year in the Silk Solar. It was just like the other thousands of solars all across the country, except for the material of the upholstery. Tomorrow would be the Sunset Festival that marked the beginning of Krasnivya’s three-month summer and the start of the new year, but for tonight, they bid farewell to the winter midnight sun that had kept them all alive another year with the traditional mead-cut vodka. Tomorrow, they’d go to oversee the ritual waking of the outdoor summer fields, and then help inspect every inch of the local greenhouses, making repairs against the next winter so no one would starve and Krasnivya would never again have to bleed dry its scarce gold to the sea-traders of the southern countries. They would flock like ravens up the otherwise-untraveled rock coast, navigating the ice floes with their full holds of grain and salted meats and preserved fruits, and demand ten times the cost of any other port for the length of the journey, and the danger of their own inexperience with the ice and the ghosts and refuge spirits who haunted the costal rocks at the mouth of the roaring taiga rivers.

“I think,” Ivan said, after all the jokes and stories of the year had been retold. “That an Entourage might be in order. Near the end of summer.”

“Oh?” asked Erzsébet, one of the Royal Foresters, as everyone perked up at the thought. It was an exciting possibility. “How far?”

“Zaloto,” Ivan told them. “And the High Temple of the Sun. It will be a pilgrimage.”

Well, you couldn’t very well argue with a pilgrimage, and especially not one to the High Temple of the Sun. It was Krasnivya’s only real religion- anyway, the idea of combining pilgrimage and Entourage was a good one. Krasnivya could do trade and diplomacy _and_ make the proper grand offerings at the High Temple. All of those were good reasons to show off, and it wasn’t like Krasnivya got a lot of them. Nobody from the south crossed the taiga, not unless they were fleeing danger, searching for somewhere safe- as King Yao had, and King Surinder before him, and a good number of most Krasniviys’ ancestors, up to and including parents. The ghosts and the refuge spirits saw to that.

The Entourage took most of the summer to prepare, and Ludwig was in the organizing triumvirate for the whole thing, with Erzsébet’s husband Roderich- himself a refugee and appointed Winter Diplomat for the trip, lucky him for attaining a title in such long disuse- and Berwald, First Officer of the Woodworkers’ Union. Roderich handled the preparation of diplomatic papers and sent out the advance letters to inform the southern courts that they were coming and what numbers to expect; Berwald organized the documentation and transport logistics for the donations coming in from all parts of Krasnivya to be left at the High Temple as offerings; and Ludwig had everything else.

They managed to get on the road just after the last month of summer started, and spent the first day of winter on Ludwig’s estate in the manor he’d been given upon his acceptance as apprentice to Former King Surinder. It was significantly bigger now than when he’d first received it because of his business skills and the willingness of the district residents to develop, given the capital to do so- first, taiga wood and charcoal for other districts’ greenhouse surpluses; then the surplus to feed more miners and carpenters; then raw lumber and charcoal, finished wooden goods, and coal, iron, copper, galena, and various other materials for smelted metals and finished goods, more food, and cash; and then buying up more mine and quarry-land with that cash until finally his manor district was supporting the limestone quarries, hot spring sulfur mines, and potash and nitric acid factories to supply gunpowder and nitrate explosives manufacturing. He was making the beginnings of a fortune off of it, augmented by a small kerosene and paraffin industry from the surprise discovery of two petroleum fields and the traditional paper trade of taiga-side manor districts.

Just about the only thing they _couldn’t_ make in his manor district was enough food to feed everyone, but so long as the industry stayed steady, neither Ludwig or his residents would have to worry too much about it. The paper millers still remembered the hardships of the years from when this had been undifferentiated crown territory, overseen along with millions of other acres of mostly-unclaimed and unworked land by the First Court Magnate, and given no special attention so long as there was no epidemic or famine ruining the area.

The manor staff welcomed the Entourage happily, used to Ludwig’s visits with the usual group friends- Ivan, Berwald, Erzsébet, Roderich, and Timo- but he got cornered by the manor officials as soon as he strayed from his friends.

“So, like, it’s great that the Red Palace is paying for the food and hosting?” Feliks, the manor steward, told him. “And Summer’s End is going to _totally fabulous_ this year, let me tell you, and people are coming from even farther away since the Prince is here. But you’re going to be gone for a _super long time._ ”

“And we can manage by ourselves!” Eduard assured him. They were in his office, surrounded by the estate’s accounts. “I did the books and we’re likely going to be at surplus over last year’s again, and we’re not anticipating any trouble. We’re even prepared for a mine collapse or a gunpowder factory exploding or some other sort of catastrophe. And there’s definitely enough to send as much discretionary specie with you as we can.”

“You don’t need to send specie coin with me,” Ludwig told them. “That’s for the emergency food funds!”

“They’re not specie coin, it’s ingots,” Eduard told him primly. “400 kilograms of it. The greenhouses shouldn’t fail _that_ catastrophically- and yes, we _do_ need to. The south isn’t going to accept printed scrip. They deal in metal coin down there, and you can shave off the appropriate silverweight when you need it, or sell the ingots for local coin. Anyway, whatever you sell down south will bring _back_ specie coin here.”

“Never know when you’ll need to go shopping,” Feliks butt in, and Ludwig resigned himself to hauling around copper and silver coin for the next year. He’d just have to spend as little of it as possible.

“Where’s the annual paperwork that I need to sign?” he asked Eduard. It was part of his job to hold onto the forms for Ludwig during extended absences, or send them along to wherever he was by courtier for signing. That was a fine arrangement for when he’d been about his assignments following Ivan around, but it was completely unfeasible with the distance south of the taiga they’d be traveling.

That paperwork was why he’d _thought_ Feliks and Eduard had cornered him.

Eduard pulled them out of a thin locked drawer in his desk, but didn’t hand them over. Instead, he put them down on his blotter and folded his hands over them.

“Eduard-”

“ _And_ you’re going to take a guard,” the manor’s accountant told him.

“I’ve been fielding super-freaked questions and concerns from district residents since Entourage was announced, ‘cause _everybody_ knew you were going to be going south with the Prince,” Feliks said. “If you die, the district goes back to undifferentiated crown territory, and nobody wants that.”

“I’m not going to _die,_ ” Ludwig said.

“You never know,” Eduard told him. “We’d be better off than we were before if we reverted back to crown territory, sure. But we wouldn’t have the same attention and without the taxes split between district manor and crown, we wouldn’t get the monetary reinfusions we’ve become used to, that are still supporting the newer developments. If we had a declared heir, this would be different.”

“Is this your way of telling me to get my act together and think about the future?”

“You’ve got your act together _fine,_ ” Feliks said, slapping him lightly on the shoulder. “And you stress like, _all the time_ about the future whenever we tell you anything that might be a problem or could be improved. Go on Entourage, take a vacation, and don’t ditch your guard.”

Ludwig took this to mean that he’d have only _one_ guard, but was proven wrong the morning after the Summer’s End fete- which, true to Felik’s words, had gone very well- when Toris _and_ Raivis presented themselves for duty.

“We were going to duel for it,” Raivis informed him, looking very odd in armor Ludwig had never seen before. It was Krasniviy-styled, but in southern materials. “But Toris pointed out that two is better than one, and he’s used to what southern mages are like, anyway.”

South of the taiga didn’t care a whit about the sort of research and innovation that Krasnivya _had_ to constantly develop to survive, because south of the taiga relied on its mages, treasured and honored wherever they were found. South of the taiga had uncounted numbers of the people, scattered across their divisive political borders and engaged in a ridiculous number of endeavors.

In Krasnivya, what few mages there were helped to grow the food. They helped create the giant glass sheets used to construct the acres-large greenhouses required to grow any food at all on the tundra, and helped keep the greenhouses warm, and provided emergency structural support when engineering came under too much strain in the midst of repair-adverse winter snowstorms, and more efficiently moved around the heat of the underground furnaces and factories that held the permafrost at bay below the soil, melting the ice in the dirt to provide water for the crops and leaving the excess into the groundwater tables for the local wells, or to be used in the factory works.

There were very, very few southern mages in Krasnivya; and as far as Ludwig knew- with exception of Toris- they were all healers. Mages had little reason to come north into the taiga, and even fewer of the ones who actually came to the ghost forest were left alone by the refuge spirits. Most mages came to do battle, refugees said when asked about this sort of thing by native Krasiviy- the south called the taiga the Black Woods, the Haunted Forest. Southern mages went there seeking a victory over the _‘demons’_ and _‘evil haunts’_ of the taiga, the glory and everlasting fame of being the mage who _finally_ managed _‘exorcise’_ or conquer the place and add to their own power.

Or else they were looking for the treasures fabled to be hidden in the woods, artefacts and techniques of untold, unbeatable power. These mages either found themselves unaccountably wandering right back out of the trees, or simply disappeared.

A bare few, even fewer than those mages who had somehow become so friendless and hunted that they counted as refugees, came to the taiga seeking to break through to Krasnivya and _‘save’_ it from the _‘Warlock Kings of Winter’_. Those joined the warning-line of corpses strung up in the trees by the refuge spirits, next to the bones of the southern bandit troupes, fragments of mercenary companies, questing groups, and other invading forces.

Ludwig had to admit that some of the southern stories he’d heard about the Warlock Kings of Winter were amusing, if also annoyingly prejudiced and fearful. Maybe they could convince or trick the southerners they met as they traveled into telling new ones they hadn’t heard before. At the very least, they could trade their own stories of the ghost forest for whatever local folklore there was.

“I know war mages,” Toris spoke up. “I _was_ one of them, and they won’t mess with you with me around. It’ll be really annoying to be able to wear proper armor, but we can’t have everything. If the Entourage is going to get attacked, there _will_ be mages along. Sure, iron and steel will stop them, and you can get them with the guns at a distance, but you’ll still be plenty dead in an ambush. Do you even _know_ how to look for mage traps? The south is likely to be littered with them, there’s been war there for a long time now.”

Ludwig had admit that he had no idea what mage traps would look like, and accepted that Toris and Raivis were going to be coming along with him. The Entourage packed up later that morning, and rode out slowly. There was no point in going fast, today- they were going to reach the taiga line, and he and Erzsébet had a duty to execute that could only be done at the edge of the forest.

Ivan had the Entourage stopped a mile out to let him and Erzsébet ride ahead. There was some grumbling from the more northern and western officials accompanying them, but not too much. Even those who didn’t live next to the taiga and the sea knew the importance of keeping up the contracts between the living and the ghosts, and the mortals and the refuge spirits.

Renewing the contract for Ludwig’s manor and for Erzsébet’s position as a Forester took a good couple hours, and Ivan had a covered, heated wagon with plenty of pillows ready for them to sleep it off in once they were done. Neither of them woke up until breakfast the next morning, taken in a wide, picturesque clearing in the pines where the camp had been set up the night before.

Timo couldn’t sit still all through breakfast, or later during the day’s ride through the trees.

“There’s no _snow,_ ” he admitted in a hushed, somewhat-terrified voice after the lunch break, when Ludwig finally lost his patience and threatened to tie the man into his saddle, valued customer of his manor’s gun industry or not. “It’s winter and it’s snowing and it’s cold but there’s no _snow._ ”

“You get used to it,” Erzsébet told him, lifting her face to the gray-cloud sky and noting the sudden line where the falling snow ceased to exist, just above the treetops. “It makes the Foresters’ jobs easier, _I_ can’t complain. And if _our_ jobs weren’t easy, your husband would be out of a job entirely.”

“I cannot believe that you are not discomforted by this,” Roderich grumbled to Ludwig. “It must be true when the courtiers say one of your parents was a refuge spirit.”

“If I ever find out who they are,” Ludwig informed him. “I’ll ask, and let you know.”

Personally, he didn’t think that particular theory about his unknown ancestry had anything to do with this. He’d grown up near the taiga, and this just wasn’t strange to him.

Ivan chuckled at Timo and Roderich, and made a teasing remark of how Timo hadn’t had any problems with the ghost forest when he’d still been Acting Field Captain of the military’s sharpshooters.

“It’s _different_ when you’re focused on the shooting,” Timo insisted stubbornly, and kept his full attention on bandit lookout until they stopped for their second night in the taiga, even though they were much too far into the trees for the refuge spirits to have stood for that kind of behavior. Even if they hadn’t known the distance traveled, they would have known by the distant-sounding murmur of song- welcoming those who ran, calling travelers home, and entrancing to death those who didn’t belong- that wove through the sunless winter night.

That was the _really_ weird thing about the taiga- you had a winter midnight sun as soon as you left the tree line for the tundra, but inside the trees the sun set each night no matter what.

Some of the other courtiers in the entourage looked quite tired in the morning, and there were more than a few who freely admitted, once asked, that the singing had kept them up. It wasn’t loud, but it had been creepy, they said.

Ludwig, Ivan, Erzsébet, and Berwald exchanged exasperated glances and rolled eyes when the northerners who didn’t know the songs of the trees weren’t looking.

Thankfully, the courtiers adjusted quickly, and by the time they broke through the southern boundary of the taiga into the outskirts of the kingdom of Neima, the entire Entourage had been sleeping soundly through the night. They set up camp right on the edge of the trees to await their royal escort, who turned up after lunch.

Ivan’s little court had to try very hard not to laugh at these men on their horses, who were terrified of the trees and the solid, furry Krasniviy vanner cobs and the group’s heavy, obvious war knives- but not Erzsébet and Timo, or Toris and Raivis, who could shoot and kill a man neatly through the heart or head a full thousand meters away with the new model Bryna breachloaders Ludwig had given them for Sunset gifts a couple of months earlier, and were bearing them openly.

It wasn’t like the escort men didn’t _notice_ them. Ludwig _saw_ them note Erzsébet and Timo and his guards, and look very slightly puzzled at the rifles across their backs, and the rifles a number of the others in the Entourage had in their saddle holsters or in easy reach in the back of wagons; but then dismissed them.

Toris rode ahead to the escort guards once the group got moving, and then dropped back to Ludwig’s side after a mile or so of travel down the main road, far enough back so the escort couldn’t hear them talking- if any of them even knew Krasniviy at all, which was unlikely. He was chuckling quietly, and it had a hard, vindictive edge to it.

“Ha!” he exclaimed to himself, softly, with a sort of bloody satisfaction. He was running his fingers and up and down his rifle strap.

“What?” Ludwig asked.

“I was worried I’d have to explain away the guns,” Toris explained. “But I didn’t. They’ve decided for themselves that the rifles are a weird sort of mage’s staff- and that Erzsébet and Timo and I are _particularly_ bad mages, so we’ve stocked our retinue with petty magicians, since there are so many of these _‘magic staffs’_ spread about!”

“I almost wish we could have an opportunity to prove them wrong,” Raivis said grumpily. He was a small person, even by the highly-dichotic height standards of Krasnivya, and looked younger than he was besides. People who didn’t know him almost always assumed that he wasn’t even an adult yet, and that he wasn’t _really_ capable of the skills required to be a district guard.

“They think you’re someone’s apprentice,” Toris told him, sounding a little apologetic about it. “It kind of works in our favor, though. No one’s taken a personal apprentice in _years,_ and it’s helping to keep up the fiction of Krasnivya as a land of mysterious barbarians. No point in letting them realize our secrets.”

“And the pistols?” Ludwig asked. He had two very nice Teinar horse pistols in his saddle holsters, down in front of his knees, where they could be easily drawn in case of bandits or assassins targeting the Prince, or in his own defense.

“I don’t think they even noticed them,” Toris said.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We've got some warnings for slavery and a sort of mind-control here, but I promise it's not going to get worse than this.

Feliciano came cheap, and he knew it.

Most mage ransoms were somewhere in the realm of 9,000 pounds silver pure. The only people who got higher ransoms were royalty. For comparison, the King of Neima, who owned his ransom contract, also held the ransom contracts for Matthieu, Prince of Tougnon, and Alfred, Prince of Sceapbridge. Matthieu, as heir to a burgeoning empire and an accomplished mage in his own right, was valued at 50,000 pounds gold pure. Alfred was valued at the hugely-insulting sum of 4,500 pounds silver pure, because he might have been a mage, but his father’s kingdom was also very small, very poor, and, in the eyes of Neima, simply the upstart duchy of the king’s younger brother.

Feliciano was worth 3,000 pounds silver pure, and there had been grumbling about lowering it to 2,000- or even 1,000 pounds, which was the lowest it was legally allowed to go.

Matthieu was still at the court of the King of Neima because the King of Tougnon considered it beneath the honor and good sense of the family to pay ransom contracts right away, when Matthieu was perfectly safe where he was and making potentially-valuable foreign connections. Alfred was here because his father still felt hugely insulted and, as Alfred had told them, was probably going to do something stupid about it. The Prince of Sceapbridge didn’t seem terribly worried about this, and Feliciano could see why- the royal family and the Neima nobility were treating him as the country cousin, sure, but still family. It was all politics to get Sceapbridge back into the kingdom, but in the meantime Alfred got to live it up away from his father, and not have to worry about getting killed in battle. It was a good bargain.

Feliciano was still at the court of Neima because his family would never, ever be able to afford 3,000 pounds silver pure. It was more money than they’d ever see in one place in their entire lifetimes, and might even be more than all seven of them- Mama, Vespasiana, Santiana, Lovino, Cristoforo, Carlino, and Lovino’s Antonio- could even _earn_ in their entire lifetimes combined.

His family was dirt-poor, and they had been even when it had just been Mama and Vespasiana as a little baby, because Mama had been a sailor and had _actual_ money, but then she’d gotten pregnant partway through a voyage in the far north, up near _here_ actually, and told the crew it was a sea spirit that had done it.

Well, when they’d gotten back to home port in Zaloto, she’d been out of a job. The savings ran out, and there were really only two things a single woman with a baby and persistent delusions could do for money, and begging didn’t pay enough.

Vespasiana and Santiana hadn’t gotten trapped in the brothels, at least. Mama worked for herself, but most prostitutes got pressured into the brothels. Somehow, she’d managed not to, despite the way she absolutely _insisted_ that that damn sea spirit kept coming back to see her, and that all of her children shared the same father.

All of her children had stayed out of them, too, which was just plain a miracle. Vespasiana had gotten herself a scutwork position on a ship, jumped off somewhere on the mainland coast, and picked up an actual sailor’s position under Antonio’s surname, with his blessing. She sent back as much of her earnings as she could afford to, but it wasn’t much. Last Feliciano had known, it had been full months since the last time they’d heard from her, and they weren’t even sure if she was alive anymore or not.

Santiana worked at the market stalls, hawking fish and other produce for enough coin and extras to keep them fed at least once a day, if everybody else was out working too. Lovino and Antonio unloaded at the docks, Cristoforo was a priest at the local temple, and Carlino- Feliciano didn’t know what he did, because he’d still been little the last time Feliciano had been home.

The way _he’d_ made his money- well, of all of them, he was the only one who’d gotten close to prostitution, because he had a _beautiful_ singing voice, and he’d busk on the street corners. Everybody knew that entertainers were just a step above prostitutes anyway, and even they weren’t _officially_ doing that as their profession, entertainment could have very fickle pay, and it was worth it to have a list of people who’d exchange favors.

But he’d been busking on one of the larger streets near the respectable market, once Santiana had managed to move up from the dockside markets, and Herakles Karpousi had walked by and heard him.

Master Herakles had been a mage of some standing, and felt the little hint of magic Feliciano hadn’t known he’d been able to use, and taken him on as his apprentice. Feliciano was one of the last mages to have been trained that way, actually, and that was because Master Herakles had been a staunch traditionalist and very against the mage’s schools that it seemed like everyone was setting up. He’d _listened_ to Feliciano when he said that he loved singing and didn’t want to give it up, and got him vocal lessons, instructions in instruments, and pulled out all the information he’d known- and it was a _lot-_ that applied to music and magic, which he’d said was an ancient and respectable field, if underrepresented in these modern times, when everyone wanted war mages, or healers, or sea mages for the ships.

Feliciano could do those things, actually, with the music and the singing. He wasn’t so good with them the traditional way, but it did, technically, work. But there were a lot of people better than him at it, so he and Master Herakles had focused on the music, and the illusions, and the storytelling.

By the time Master Herakles had declared him as accomplished as he could get under his tutelage, Feliciano was one of the few specialized court mages anyone knew of, and the only thing even approaching the old bardic tradition that nobody cared for any longer.

Getting employed should have been easy. Courts had had court mages for as long as anyone could remember, and Feliciano even doubled as musical entertainment. He could illusion the most fantastical of scenes and outfits and effects, and sing or play away the overbearing heat from a party or the attendee’s headaches, and with enough concentration he could nudge people just enough that they’d be open to a skilled negotiator or conversationalist without singing at all, just speaking.

But Master Herakles had had no friends left by that time, because they’d all gone and died of old age or the wars or weren’t friends any longer because of ideological differences and then he’d gotten sick and _died_ and what money he’d had had come to Feliciano. He’d turned right around and invested most of it in getting Cristoforo into the priesthood because piety was all well and good but the temples _listened_ to money, and almost all of what was left went to starting enough of a fund to at least _start_ Carlino on a basic education that he never would have gotten otherwise, if he got to literacy he could be a market scribe and that was respectable enough amongst the class they occupied-

It wasn’t a stupid decision, and Feliciano would stand by that until he died. Master Herakles couldn’t give him any references, but Cristoforo was established in an honorable profession and Carlino would be able to get _somewhere_ and yeah, at the time Feliciano had thought he’d be able to get a court job easily enough and his family would finally be able to live without worrying so much, but it hadn’t worked out.

Feliciano had left the Zaloti Islands and gone to the mainland with what little he had, and discovered that there weren’t any court jobs _anywhere._ Fashion and priority had changed in the last year and a half as the wars ramped up- Tougnon against Qiansung was the big one, but Neima’s borders were unstable and Lapsara hadn’t had a really _there_ ruler in a couple of generations and under the aegis of all this nonsense the smaller states were finding reason to air old enmities or invent new ones and really Zaloto and the Fulgrad were the only places _not_ fighting, and that was at least partially because everybody needed the Zaloti and Fulgradian merchants to supply their wars in the first place.

Anyway- either nobody had coin to spare on court mages, only war mages or healers; or they had enough money to spare for whatever they wanted, and were following the fashion Tougnon had set, which was flaunting your wealth by matching what Feliciano could do, but _without_ illusions.

Most other mages weren’t as… _limited_ as he was. The other court mages had all transferred over easily into war magic, or plain healing, or infrastructure.

But entertaining was Feliciano’s one real skill and by the Sun’s light he wasn’t going to give it up. He wasn’t going to fight and he wasn’t going to try to engineer and he wasn’t going to pretend that seeing people hurt didn’t put him to shaking and weeping. He was going to make people _happy._

So he’d busked his way up and down the coast, and then inland, where the war caught him up and to the armies mages were mages and he’d been sent to battle and he wouldn’t _fight_ so he’d gotten captured and he’d been in and out of every army he’d ever heard of, just about, and then the third or fourth time he’d been caught by Neima one of the mage officers had recognized him, realized he wasn’t good for anything, and sent him as a present to the court.

The royal family had been politely appreciative when the officer presented him, and then promptly had Feliciano shoved off in the ransom wing where he wouldn’t be in anyone’s way. Neima had no use for a court mage, and the king was only interested in the ransom money he could get for a mage, especially a Zaloti mage, because that money could go back into the army.

Except Feliciano had told the housekeeper, who handled such business for the king, that there was no one at home who could afford to pay 9,000 pounds silver pure for him, and that he didn’t have any friends or patrons who could do it, either. He wasn’t from a merchant family, his people were poor.

The housekeeper had been very disappointed, and looked faintly disgusted about the news, and so he’d been left to his own devices, so long as he stayed in the wing and showed up when the housekeeper called for him.

Mostly, that meant Feliciano kept to himself. The princes were nice enough to him, but they were often out with the royal family and Neiman nobles, dancing attendance and being important. They had had little conversations, and Feliciano supposed he could count them as acquaintances, since they were all living next door to each other.

Once, this sort of captivity would have been a blessing from the gods. Royalty could definitely afford to pay a mage’s ransom- but Matthieu’s father’s court had been the one to set the standard of no court mages, and Alfred’s was entirely too poor to afford the ransom, even if the housekeeper _did_ devalue it to ridiculous amounts.

The housekeeper had called him again, today, and Feliciano walked into the office fully expecting to be informed that his contract was now 1,000 pounds silver, and maybe not even pure.

“Are you literate?” the housekeeper demanded when he walked in.

“Um- yes,” Feliciano told him.

“And you can read music?”

“Yes,” Feliciano said again, getting a fluttery feeling in his stomach. The housekeeper wouldn’t be asking him what he could do if this was about devaluing his contract.

“And play instruments?”

“The harp, the violin, the mandolin, the simple flute-”

The housekeeper held up a hand to stop him.

“And you sing?”

“I know modern court, classical rustic and high, older court, common popular-”

“Can you dance?”

“I could do better,” Feliciano admitted after a short pause. Even if the answer devalued whatever deal was being set up- well, if someone got a deal on his contract, they’d be more likely to pay it, and he’d be _out_ of here. “But yes, lots of sorts.”

“And your illusion skills- what can you do for a well-born woman?”

Was his contract being bought out by a married couple? That could be nice, if it was a love match then it would be simply wonderful and if it wasn’t, well, a court mage who was a bard could smooth relationships over easily enough, it was part of the reason they’d been valued before that had fallen out of favor.

“I can make it so her hair and make-up always looks perfect, and her dress and jewels of a higher quality than they really are. I can change her physical features, but it’s best if it’s done subtly otherwise it gets really obvious but I’m good at subtle! I can do men too-”

The housekeeper reached across his desk and grabbed Feliciano’s face, pushing his head around so he could see his profile.

“What?” Feliciano asked, voice a muffled by the man’s hand. He couldn’t fathom what this searching, critical look meant, but it was very uncomfortable.

“You’re pretty enough,” the housekeeper said, in a detached business tone that Feliciano had heard before and it was _assessing_ and when people were assessed on prettiness like that-

Someone stepped up behind him and the housekeeper let go of his face. He didn’t get time enough to move before whoever it was behind him whipped something thin and gold over his head, against his neck.

Feliciano froze up. There was no _reason_ for anyone to try to strangle him but this was _danger_ and his reaction to danger was freeze up, he was no good on the battlefield and this had almost gotten him killed a couple of times but here maybe it wouldn’t.

He felt delicate filigree pressing into the skin of his neck, and the ends of wires fuse together. The person behind him moved away and he tried to reach up, to feel the golden choker he couldn’t see; but the housekeeper grabbed his hands and held them down so gold filigree bracelets could be wrapped around his wrists, and Feliciano got a good look at them this time and felt like he was going to pass out because Master Herakles had been a classicist so he’d _seen_ the designs for these but nobody _used_ them any longer he’d been told, everybody always said-

“You’re worthless,” the housekeeper said, still so bluntly detached. “No one will buy your contract, and Neima has no need for a court mage. But we could use a courtesan.”

Oh no.

“You can-”

“I didn’t tell you you could talk,” the housekeeper snapped over him, and his throat seized up, enough that he had to wheeze for air.

Feliciano felt himself start to tear up.

“Good, the enchantments _do_ work,” the housekeeper said. “You are _worthless,_ Feliciano of Zaloto. You are a burden on this court, and since there is no one who can pay out your contract, you will _work_ it off. We’re feeling magnanimous, so all you owe the King of Neima is 1,600 pounds silver pure. Be grateful, we even picked a method you know about. We could have put you in the scullery or the fields instead”

 _I don’t know anything about being a courtesan,_ Feliciano thought, still unable to speak and desperately trying _not_ to feel grateful about the situation.

The housekeeper picked up on the gist of the thought anyway, through his expression, and snorted.

“We sent people to Zaloto to _check_ on the state of your family’s financials, as per regulations,” he said. “Your mother is a whore and you lived around whores all your life. You know enough to get started, and you’ll pick up the rest quick enough. You’ll have plenty of practice.”

“It would have been better if you _were_ a woman,” the housekeeper continued. “But you can fake being one. I’ve seen illusions before, they’re very convincing- and by your own admission and by your ransom contract, that’s your specialty. So. Show me.”

He didn’t want to, he _really_ didn’t want to; it wasn’t like he hadn’t done this before women were _pretty_ and looking pretty was wonderful but that was _private._

But the enchantments on the mage slavings forced it. The usual illusion came.

The housekeeper looked him up and down pointedly.

“I said _show me,_ ” he repeated. “You’re not going to be wearing _clothes._ ”

Feliciano de-illusioned the usual dress under the pressure of the order, proving how thorough it was.

“Adequate, I suppose,” the housekeeper decided. “More in the chest and hips and less in the waist, you’re here to please- and you’ll have to have a different dress, I’m sure _you_ know the right balance.”

He could guess at it, and appeared one. There wasn’t an order to, but it was slightly less humiliating like this.

“You’re going to be entertainment,” the other man told him. “You’ll sing at court and dance with the dignitaries and visitors as ordered, and afterward, you’ll be available to whatever guests the king is hosting, should they be deemed worthy. You will do _whatever it takes_ to keep them happy, and spare no effort at it. No refusals, no protests. You will be enthusiastic and you will _enjoy_ whatever they want to do with you, because _they_ are the only ones who matter. There won’t be any more of this _crying,_ it’s unattractive.”

The tears just _stopped,_ but Feliciano’s eyes still burned with them.

“And of course you’re not to tell anyone about the slavings,” the housekeeper said. “The delegation for Krasnivya will be here tonight. You’re to sing for dinner, and after court is finished, you’ll present yourself at the delegation’s quarters. Figure out how to make a convincing orgasm with that, at least- that is, if you don’t already know how to do it.”


	3. Chapter 3

South of the taiga was just so _strange._ Ludwig was glad that he was used to using guns and not the war knives, because they were all under strict reminders _not_ to draw them unless absolutely necessary. Nowhere but Krasnivya used iron or steel because it disrupted magic, and nowhere but Krasnivya had learned the trick of making them work together. The metal components of the guns were small enough or encased in enough wood to not make a difference, but in the interests of politeness, the knives would stay in their insulated sheaths, and the other steel or iron equipment they’d brought would stay wrapped in silk and wool unless they were being used- and even then it would be outdoors and away from settlements.

Even the _horses_ didn’t have iron on them- the riding horses were shod with bronze shoes and the few draft horses they’d brought had funny leather boot contraptions, as per southern status indication customs. Most of the wagons were fitted wood, or held together with wooden pegs rather than nails. The offering gifts for the High Temple and the presents and trade goods they brought didn’t have any iron or steel in them, either.

This whole production had been a massive headache, and Ludwig was irritated that he was being reminded about it. The Neiman guards with their escort were wearing _bronze short swords_ and _leather armor_ with _bronze breastplates,_ of all the ridiculous things.

He wanted to grab them by the shoulders and shake some sense into them. Magic wasn’t _worth_ this!Did no one _experiment_ in these sunforsaken dark-nighted countries?

The escort and the guards noticed him glaring at them, and looked very nervous. Timo noticed them noticing, and raised a questioning eyebrow at him, fiddling with the strap of his rifle.

“I’m very glad this is only a year’s trip,” Ludwig grumbled to him. “But I _still_ might scream at someone about this pointless and unforgivable inanity of _no steel_ before we’re back home.”

“State secrets, Ludwig,” Timo reminded him mildly, but mostly looked like he agreed with the idea of screaming.

“It’s so _inefficient,_ ” Ludwig continued, feeling a little better that he had someone to complain to. “Do you have any idea how soft and weak bronze is in comparison?”

“Why do you think we had these made specially?” Raivis asked, tapping his cuirass.

Timo peered at it.

“That’s not just bronze?” he asked, intrigued.

“Mostly bronze,” Raivis said. “Had some aluminum added in, and just a little bit of iron. It was nightmarishly expensive, but Toris said he figured the investment was worth it. This is harder than any southern armor and it’s just so slightly resistant to magic. Probably not enough to make a difference, but we feel better for wearing it. Anyway, we’re not planning on ever coming south again, and once we’re done with it we can sell it off to someone else.”

They fell into a discussion of whether or not adding something as hard to get as aluminum into armor was worth it, and kept up that general thread of conversation until they reached the palace, where they had to stay silent and attentive- Timo and Raivis and Toris to the Neiman royal guards and Ludwig at Ivan’s side, even though he couldn’t understand the language at all. Ivan could get by in it, courtesy of Roderich’s lessons, but Ludwig just wasn’t a natural at this like Ivan was. He’d grown up with Krasniviy and learned Zaloti in temple classes, and then slowly learned Lapsarain from King Surinder over the years he’d spent under the man’s tutelage. If Ludwig worked at it, he could probably learn Neiman, but they weren’t going to be here long enough to justify the years he’d have to put into it. Toris had been drilling him a few short, useful phrases; but he admitted that Ludwig’s accent might make him completely incomprehensible to native speakers.

Things didn’t get interesting until dinner, when the entertainment came out.

She was the most _beautiful_ woman Ludwig had ever seen, brown hair shining gently in the candlelight and honey-brown eyes seeming to glow, just a bit; the warmth of her complexion highlighted just so with the warm dove purple of her gown and the silver-gray fur ruff at the collar of the dress. The fur sparkled like it had melting snowflakes caught in it, and it was almost definitely a tribute to Krasnivya, but Ludwig almost couldn’t bring himself to be impressed by the subtle political statement, because then she _sang._

He’d never- there weren’t _words_ for this, the song was absolutely everything, he felt it down to his bones. He was so caught up in it, so enchanted, that he didn’t even notice that the rest of the room hadn’t been as caught up as him when the music had finished, the woman had curtsied and sat back down.

Ludwig had had to physically shake himself, and even after that he still didn’t feel all that present.

“Well,” he heard Ivan say quietly, and tore his eyes from the woman to give his attention to the Winter Prince. “How interesting. I would not have expected southerners to have a spirit-child.”

Of course. Of _course_ the woman would be half-refuge spirit, if she could sing like _that._ And no wonder he’d been so caught up in it- Ludwig glanced over at Erzsébet, and that look proved that she was still as lost in the memory of it has he was. Both of them were contract-holders with the refuge spirits for their people. Power like that would affect them more deeply.

Still, though.

Dinner finished with him still in a bit of a daze, and as soon as they’d gotten back to the quarters given to the delegation and everyone had settled in for small evening glasses of sweetened tea vodka and cards, he pounced on Roderich and hauled him off to the side.

“How are you supposed to approach women here?” he demanded. “If you haven’t been introduced?”

“It would be better if Erzsébet went to her first,” Roderich told him, tone dry and amused. “I’m certain we could set something up tomorrow morning.”

“I _have_ to talk to her, Roderich,” Ludwig said, and then realized something horrible. “She’s Neiman- I _don’t speak Neiman,_ how am I supposed to talk to her-”

“I could come along,” Roderich suggested mildly.

“You just want to make fun of me,” Ludwig accused, and Roderich’s small knowing smile spoke for him.

“It isn’t done for young respectable women to be alone with a strange man,” his friend told him. “And it so happens that _I_ am from an honorable skilled artisan family in a Neiman city. I am also an officially-appointed diplomat, whereas you are simply visiting foreign nobility. I am the _perfect_ chaperone.”

“ _Erzsébet_ won’t make fun of me if I ask _her_ to be the chaperone.”

There was a low chuckle from the table where the others were busy with the cards, and Ludwig frowned at them all for eavesdropping. Timo smiled back at him, downed his glass of sweetened tea vodka in one shot, and poured himself another.

“That’s a filthy habit,” Roderich said.

“Oh, come on,” his wife protested, smiling in good humor. “If we run out of cash, we can send Timo around to the taverns and make bets on who passes out first.”

“It’s uncivilized,” he insisted.

“The south’s idea of _civilized_ includes _flint hand axes_ ,” Berwald said derisively. “I’m surprised there’s a straight beam of wood anywhere.”

“Only for destitute wandering laborers,” was Roderich’s sulky protest. “And we _can_ work wood. We make _ships._ ”

Ivan waved a hand at them all to keep them off Roderich’s native pride.

“It is nice to see you interested in someone, Ludwig,” he said. “I hope you are happy together.”

“I haven’t even properly met her yet!”

“I’m sure it will be a _fine_ wedding,” Erzsébet said with a wide smile. “A winter one or a summer one, do you think-”

_“Erzsébet.”_

“I heard her sing in my bones too, Ludwig,” she told him, playing her hand at the cards. Berwald immediately countered with three of his own. “And she’s plenty pretty. But _you’re_ the one who’s gone all sunny over her.”

“I’m Krasniviy, she might not even _want_ to speak to me, they have all those stories about how monstrous we are!”

“ _I’ll_ chaperone for you,” Toris volunteered. “No offense to our Master Diplomat, but he’s liable to be intimidating. She’s probably minor nobility, and he currently outrank her. I definitely don’t.”

“You aren’t high status enough,” Roderich argued.

“I’m a mage,” Toris reminded him. “A _war_ mage, and I can claim my name with the diplomatic immunity of Krasnivya. That’s status enough.”

Roderich and Toris probably would have worked their way up to a full-fledged debate on court protocol, but a knock on the door interrupted them.

Raivis opened it just enough to look out, one hand on the bronze sword he was still displeased with. He and Toris had expanded their specific duty of guarding Ludwig to guarding the Prince and his little court generally, since they were all Ludwig’s friends anyway. Ivan hadn’t objected- they were familiar, if not actually friends, and Timo and Erzsébet had challenged them to a test of arms while they were still in the taiga, just to be sure.

“My Lord Second Magnate,” Raivis called, his entirely-too-pleased tone making the out-of-place highly formal address sound even more absurd. “Your ladylove has arrived.”

_“Why.”_

He opened the door fully and made a ridiculous sweeping bow, and Ludwig was too flustered to say anything else, because _there she was._


	4. Chapter 4

Feliciano hadn’t been able to help working himself up about the evening over dinner. He’d barely been able to eat, and after dinner had been dismissed he’d taken the longest break the mage slavings would let him to vomit and hyperventilate in an out of the way privy, futilely wishing that there some way to get rid of the things. Mage slavings were designed to be permanent- the only time one had ever come off once they’d been placed on a mage, it had been a goddess removing them from one of her favored mage-priests. It had been after that incident that they’d finally been outlawed; but apparently Neima thought itself sufficiently removed from everyone else to get away with this. Their only real neighbors were Krasnivya, after all, and it was the event of the century to have even _one_ of them venture south of the Haunted Forest.

He’d only heard stories of Krasnivya before, and he had no idea how to square them with the delegation he’d seen at dinner- five men and a woman, the Prince and his head courtiers. He had to know who they all were because they were the people he was supposed to- to-

They all had very strange titles, to go with strange looks. Winter Prince Ivan was one of the strangest, with his ashy gray hair and purple eyes, but one day he’d be the Warlock King of Winter, ruling over ghosts and spirits and who knew what other horrors and strange people the rumored snow-wastes bred.

The man who was maybe Winter Diplomat, maybe Master Diplomat, had those purple eyes too, but a Neiman name- Roderich- but like all the others, he hadn’t provided any further titles of nobility or even his family name, leaving the court floundering. His wife Erzsébet was a Royal Forester, which implied some terrifying things about both her and the things the people of Kranivya were used to dealing with. People were saying that she was some sort of mage, but no one seemed to be able to agree whether she was a weak one, or a strong one pretending to be weak.

Similar confusion and doubt surrounded Lord Timo, Captain of the Krasniviy Military’s… well, the word Feliciano had heard said during the formal presentations was _tochstrelziy,_ which Master Diplomat Lord Roderich had then translated as _‘good marksmen’_. It had been left unexplained just what qualified a good archer, or maybe it was war mages since he’d been seen with the same sort of staff as Lady Erzsébet was supposed to have been carrying, by Krasniviy standards. They also hadn’t said anything about how big this group was, which was more worrying- but at the very least it was an elite group, or Lord Timo was extremely high-ranking in whatever system of titles Krasnivya had, because otherwise he wouldn’t be along. Or perhaps he was just in charge of security for the group, but if that was the case then why was he also part of the delegation?

Then there was Lord Berwald, First Officer of the Woodworker’s _‘Union’_ , which was another very strange term. Lord Roderich had had a harder time explaining this one, but apparently Lord Berwald was something like a _Guildmaster,_ which was wonderfully scandalous to the Neiman nobility. Woodworking covered the shipbuilders, the furniture-makers, the charcoal burners, the carpenters, the loggers, the wainwrights, the wheelwrights, and many, many others. It hadn’t been said outright, but Feliciano was pretty sure that the Woodworker’s Guild was the biggest one in Krasnivya.

And then there was the Court Magnate of the Second Degree- Ludwig.

The man who’d stared dumbstruck at him while he sang, and couldn’t keep his eyes off him afterwards, all through dinner.

What exactly Lord Ludwig’s job was, and what his equivalent title was, seemed to be the discussion topic of the night. Feliciano had heard a lot of speculation over dinner- was there a difference between a Magnate and a _Court_ Magnate? Was it like court nobility, who held titles but no land; or could it be that not all nobles of Krasnivya were welcome at court? What was second degree- did you calculate it from the remove from the king, the prince, or somewhere else? Guesses about his equivalent title ranged from Archduke to Count, as did estimates of his effective power, since it seemed that he was Prince Ivan’s right hand man.

Feliciano didn’t much care about equivalent titles. Lord Ludwig was important enough to have a claim on his- his _services_ , and with the way the man was clearly drawn in by Feliciano’s forced illusion, he was sickeningly sure that he knew with who and where he’d be spending tonight.

The door to the Krasniviy’s quarters was opened by a page boy in a quilted coat with an arms patch of a black eagle on gold- that was incongruent, Feliciano was _sure_ that he’d seen Prince Ivan’s arms and that was a gold two-headed eagle on red and that was different again from the white two-headed eagle on blue of Krasnivya and the Winter King, and he was focusing on stupid details instead of thinking about what the mage slavings were forcing him to do by the Sun’s light no no no he didn’t _want to-_

The page boy said something to the room and Feliciano wanted to burst into tears right there because he’d shown up and the first thing was a _joke,_ they’d been told what he was here for-!

Lord Ludwig was staring at him again when the door opened all the way. The other dignitaries were smiling at him and there was an edge to the way they glanced between the two of them and if this had to happen _please_ could it be over with already.

It wasn’t Lord Ludwig who got up, though- it was Lord Roderich.

“A pleasure to receive you this evening,” he said, taking Feliciano’s hand and making a little bow over it like Feliciano was a _real_ lady. “Though we fear that we have not had the honor of your name.”

His _name-_

“Feliciana,” he lied. “Of Zaloto.”

The atmosphere of the room seemed to brighten, somehow.

“Oh!” Prince Ivan exclaimed. “A Zaloti! An unexpected boon, Lady Feliciana, to meet you here so far north in the nighttime lands.”

The prince’s accent was rough, and of a type Feliciano had never heard before; but everything else about his Zaloti was _perfect._

“The nighttime lands?” Feliciano asked, affecting the polite court confusion of minor nobility. “I’m afraid I don’t know your meaning, Your Highness- the sun still shines in Neima, though the winter nights may be long and cold and dark.”

“Can they really?” Lady Erzsébet asked, sounding keenly interested. She was also grammar-perfect in her Zaloti.

“In Krasnivya, Lady Feliciana,” Lord Roderich said, looking at him. Yet _another_ answer in Zaloti, did the entire delegation know it? Why? “The sun never sets in the winter. We have nine months of perpetual sunlight.”

Feliciano stared at him, and didn’t think that that was too out of character for the role he was playing. There was just no _reason_ to lie that blatantly, and there weren’t any suppressed looks of amusement to betray an attempt to have one over on the stupid foreigners.

“That sounds…”

Feliciano searched for a polite word, and decided on: “Difficult.”

“On the contrary,” Lord Roderich said. “Tight shutters for winter blizzards work just as well for keeping out the sun when it is time to sleep, and the constant source of light and warmth is absolutely essential for us to grow our crops. We would never wish to lose such a blessing from the Sun.”

 The particular twist on the Zaloti word for _‘sun’_ that made it _‘Sun’_ could have been an accident, but everything else about their Zaloti had been without mistake.

“Are you a Zealot as well, Lord Roderich?” he asked politely.

“All of Krasnivya,” was the answer, and then evening more startlingly- “And, please, do call me Roderich. I know it is not the custom in Neima, and I know very little of Zaloti social manners, but it is custom in Krasnivya to leave titles be, but for formal occasions.”

_Whatever it takes to keep them happy._

“Of course, Roderich,” Feliciano said, and it felt so _wrong._

They actually cleared a space for him at the table and poured him a glass of whatever they were drinking and asked if he wanted to be dealt into the card game and assured him that it didn’t matter that he didn’t know the rules, they could teach him.

“Really, it’s not that hard,” one of the people said- oh, Feliciano hadn’t seen him before, who was _this?_ “I only got to Krasnivya a few years ago. It’s a good way to pick up the language, actually; everyone plays it and it’s easier to tolerate weird gaps when you don’t know the words or can’t figure out how to say something when there’s also cards for everyone else to pay attention to.”

“You… _moved_ to Krasnivya?” Feliciano asked. He hadn’t known there were any ships that even _went_ that far north.

“Ran away to,” the man corrected. “I was fleeing the wars.”

“Why not Zaloto then?” Feliciano asked. “Or the Fulgrad?”

The man smiled thinly, and switched out of Zaloti into Neiman.

“I’m Toris,” he said. “Laurinatis.”

In each generation, there were mages who managed to make a name for themselves. In times past it had been bards, but nowadays it was mostly war mages. Master Herakles had been one of the big names of the last generation, even if he had been disgraced- and Toris Laurinatis had been one of _the_ ones for Feliciano’s. If he’d been fleeing the wars, they just would have followed him to Zaloto or Fulgrad. He wouldn’t even have been able to claim sanctuary at Erzernai College in Uteyna, which had made its name by having him as an alumnus.

“Everyone thinks you’re dead,” Feliciano told him.

“A couple of years ago I would have said _‘good’_ ,” the greatest war mage of the generation said. “But I’ve had a break, and I think I can stand seeing some war again, as long as it’s just for a little bit. Plus, well- being perfectly honest with you, Feliciana: Krasnivya knows more hard fact about the south than the south does about Krasnivya, but in the big picture of things, Krasnivya knows shit-all about anywhere else.”

Toris flashed a lopsided, slightly-mocking smile, and switched back into Zaloti.

“Especially _this_ ridiculous oaf,” he said, elbowing Lord Ludwig- who had quit _staring_ but still kept looking- hard in the side. “Who’s liable to get himself into some mess he’ll need extracting from, probably because he can’t sort himself out enough to _talk_ to people he’s interested in.”

Lord Ludwig looked like a first-time busker who’d just looked up and gotten a huge case of stage fright because he’d just realized he’d attracted his first big crowd.

Feliciano suddenly realized that it was difficult to stay scared and worried any longer, because he found himself waiting for an uncomfortably-mixed reaction of knowing the man he was going to be forced into bed with later was apparently too shy to talk to him directly.

It must have been something to do with the way that they’d just accepted him into the group, and hadn’t made a single sexual move or joke at all in the- almost two hours now? wow- that he’d been here.

Lord Ludwig worked up enough nerve to look him in the face and managed to say: “You’re beautiful and very good at singing,” before going bright red and burying himself in his cards again.

Toris rolled his eyes at the man as the rest of the table laughed and turned their attention to matching his hastily-thrown bet to let him have the space to forget his embarrassment.

“So what do you do?” Toris asked Feliciano. “You don’t seem like a merchant, and there’s a bit of feel of magic about you.”

Left unspoken was that every other mage was involved in the wars, or out riding around the countries, doing maintenance and repairs on the many things that needed constant attention.

“I’m a court mage,” Feliciano told him, because that’s what _should_ have been true.

“A _court_ mage?” Toris asked, eyebrows rising in surprise. “I hadn’t thought that there _were_ any more of those. I’m surprised Neima could afford you, Feliciana, that must be a very competitive business.”

That stung, and Feliciano wasn’t sure that his answering smile wasn’t forced and a little bitter even through the illusion.

“My business is your pleasure.”


	5. Chapter 5

“Did I make a complete fool of myself last night?” Ludwig asked again, and Raivis sighed again.

“You barely managed to speak a sentence to her,” Toris told him. “You didn’t give yourself the _chance_ to.”

“But _should_ I have?”

“ _Yes,_ you lovestruck fool!” Roderich yelled from another room.

Toris resisted letting go a sigh of his own, and wondered how his employer had gotten so completely hopeless at talking to people he might like to court.

Well- that might be a little unfair, he could admit. Krasnivya was very upfront about that sort of thing, though here in the south they’d call that _‘forward’_. There wasn’t this courtly flirting and romance that happened here in the courts in Ludwig’s home, and the man was absolutely out of his depth. He really hated making people uncomfortable, or offending them. It was one of the main reasons Toris liked working for him so much. He was undemanding, unless he’d put you to a project and was expecting results.

“It’s good that Feliciana came over last night,” he told Ludwig. “Because now we know her status. Sending Roderich or Erzsébet as a go-between would be too much- you’re introduced now, and she may be a court mage but that’s all the status it seems like she has. She knows my reputation, and I’m plenty acceptable.”

“You have a reputation?” Raivis asked. Ludwig looked surprised as well.

“I do, actually,” Toris informed them. “I was a _war mage,_ they get around. It’s probably appropriate for you to write a short note- I’m taking a _‘thank you for your company’_ note from Prince Ivan already, I can take yours too.”

Ludwig hunted around and came up with a fountain pen and a piece of fine stationary paper from his manor’s mills.

“Say that you’re interested in making her further acquaintance,” Toris dictated. “That _exact_ wording, Ludwig, that’s important. Ask if it would please her to meet- oh, in the gardens or something, maybe in the afternoon and hour or two before dinner. That’s enough time for her to decide and get back to you, and having dinner right after proves that you two weren’t sneaking off to do something illicit.”

“Why would they think that we were trying to do something criminal?” Ludwig asked, looking up from the paper.

This time, Toris _did_ sigh.

“Not criminal,” he said. _“Sex.”_

Ludwig went very red, and Toris told him that he’d be back in half an hour or so to pick up his and the Prince’s notes for Feliciana.

It was a good thing that Feliciana had come to see them for reasons beyond what he’d given Ludwig.

There was something off about her, and now he knew it. He was going to find out what. As a general rule, off mages were extremely bad business- and a _court_ mage? Last he’d heard, court mages were on the way out. One or two could have hung on, sure; but a mage with illusion skills would be a great spy, and _‘I’m the court mage’_ was an easy cover, backed by tradition and history.

With that particular suspicion in mind, Toris had thought he’d be prepared for whatever he’d be able to dig up about her.

Unfortunately, he wasn’t prepared at _all._

At first, it was only twitters of laughter and hushed conversation from courtiers he passed in the hallway. He didn’t pay them much attention at first, because it was probably just noble superiority and gawking at the strange foreigners- but it kept up, and there were a few instances of _particular_ looks that made him think that someone was trying to have them on.

If he was a more paranoid person- if he’d still been the person he was when he ran to Krasnivya- he’d have thought that someone had gotten a hold of his full name and started to make something of it. It was still an option, of course, but if it was, he was fairly certain one of the foreign dignitaries would have approached him by now.

Eventually someone did approach him. She looked like one of the younger minor nobles, and she fidgeted with her dress gloves as she told him about Feliciano.

“It’s not right of him,” she said. “Just because you’re foreign and no one will buy his contract so he’s stuck here being useless. It’s petty and mean and he should be ashamed of himself. I don’t know what the housekeeper was _thinking,_ letting him get away with that.”

That explained a lot, and Toris sat on his immediate anger to think about things a minute, because that had been the _official_ welcome banquet, and a mage under ransom contract shouldn’t have been tolerated playing a trick like that. It reflected badly on the King of Neima.

So Toris went to find the housekeeper, who deigned to see him after Toris intimidated the gatekeeping maidservant who controlled access to the man’s office by temporarily granting himself the title of Head of the Winter Prince’s Guard.

“I have some questions about the singer from last night,” Toris told the housekeeper.

“Did that whore not do her job properly?” the housekeeper demanded, running over his conversational space. “She had _very clear_ orders to please the delegation however they wanted. I’ll give her tighter orders before she gets sent back tonight, and I’ll check the bindings too.”

There was something going on here.

Toris stayed composed, betraying absolutely nothing. He was good at bland and unassuming- it had been one of his strengths as a war mage.

“She pleased the delegation greatly,” he said, and made two split-second decisions. A rank opened doors, and foreign ignorance covered a lot of searching questions. “Duke Ludwig, especially. Bindings, though? She didn’t appear to have anything like that.”

“Magic bindings,” the housekeeper said dismissively. “You don’t use them? They’re common here.”

 _Wouldn’t you like me to believe **that,**_ Toris thought pointedly, noting the man’s nervous tics at letting that bit of information slip thoughtlessly. The anger was a lot harder to sit on now. That was _illegal,_ and he almost wished he was playing Laurinaitis, the Great War Mage of Erzenai, so he could enforce the Collegiate Code shared by all the mage-training institutions and strike this man down where he stood, and then go on a hunt for the mage who’d enchanted the slavings Feliciano- Feliciana? he wasn’t even sure any longer, the housekeeper either thought or wanted _him_ to think that the singer was female- had to have hidden with illusions.

“We have few mages in Krasnivya,” he told the housekeeper instead, adding a heavier touch of Ludwig’s thick Krasniviy accent to the Neiman he was otherwise competent in. “These bindings, are they related to this _‘ransom contract’_ people have told me of? I hear that hers is extremely cheap.”

The housekeeper’s eyes lit up, and he went on a whole explanation of a mage’s ransom contract and what mage slavings did and exactly _how_ the singer was supposed to pay the King of Neima back for the worthless contract. By the end of it, Toris quite wished he hadn’t heard any of it all, but it had been a good opening to get what he _knew_ he needed.

Once he’d gotten his hands on a copy of the extremely cheap ransom contract- and it said Feliciano Vargas, all right then- he went straight back to the quarters they’d been given, thinking furiously the entire way.

He asked Raivis to bring everyone into the main room, where they’d sat for drink and cards the night before. Everyone showed up promptly and mostly armed, prepared for an emergency that would get violent.

“There’s something horrible going on here, and we’ve had our faces shoved in it,” Toris told them. “Lady Feliciana is a trained court mage by the name of Feliciano Vargas. The King of Neima owns his ransom contract, and can’t get rid of it even though it’s extremely low, and turned to magical bindings and forced prostitution to make him _work_ the contract off. He was supposed to be here for sexual use last night.”

That news caused a lot of uproar, and Toris had to get Roderich’s help to get the native Krasniviy to settle down again.

“That’s slavery!” Berwald protested hotly.

“The bindings?” Roderich asked. “Yes, that is why they are called mage slavings, and are illegal. The ransom contract? No. Working against the value of a contract that is too high for oneself, family, and friends to pay off, or until a mage finds a patron who will pay it off for them, is a time-honored tradition. It keeps mages in circulation, you see; and when it is nobility that have ransom contracts, it is a safe way to hold hostages and a convenient way to have a young man see something of another court. What has happened _here_ is a perversion of the system.”

“How much,” Prince Ivan said icily. “Is 1,600 pounds?”

Toris did a quick conversion.

“About 720 kilograms, sir.”

Erzsébet and Raivis looked a bit ill at the thought of that much specie coin in one place.

“The south calls that _low?_ ” Timo said quietly into the suddenly silent room.

“It is for a mage ransom,” Toris said. “Not for much else.”

“Who even _has_ that much silver on hand?” Erzsébet asked, aghast. “There’s the royal stockpile for buying food for if there’s a bad year and we have to invite southern merchants up, and some of the manors have stockpiles, but-”

“How many pounds to a kilogram?” Ludwig demanded, sitting very stiff in his chair. “About half?”

“The closest I could estimate it was to 0.45 pounds per kilogram,” Toris told him. “But a half is good enough, I guess. I’m not sure either of those numbers are very accurate, it’s not like there’s a real need to convert between the two values often.”

“Then I’ve got about 889 pounds of pure silver with me,” Ludwig said. “It was forced on me as spending money for my time in the Entourage, and I can’t think of anything better to spend it on. My manor and my district mines are close enough that I could send Raivis back on a fast horse to requisition more. It won’t get here before we’re scheduled to leave, but I could stay behind. Refining copper and galena always makes a bit of silver as a byproduct, and we’ve stockpiled it against catastrophe. I get a cut for personal use, and I was saving against a bad year, but Eduard insists that we’re continuing to make a surplus and have nothing to worry about.”

“I have 250 kilos,” Prince Ivan said after a moment. “That is 555 pounds? King Yao had much the same thought process as your manor staff, I think.”

Everyone else volunteered their amounts- no one else had _nearly_ as much as Ludwig or the Winter Prince, but between the other four in the heart of the delegation, and what Toris and Raivis had brought along, they came up with another 50 kilos.

“We will all be out of money,” Erzsébet said grimly. “But this is worth it. It’s simply unconscionable, what they’re doing here!”

“Hm,” Roderich said, looking critically at the small pile of silver on the floor. “We _are_ just beginning our pilgrimage, though- and while it is a good cause, having _no_ money for the rest of the trip seems very unwise. I’m certain that there are others in the Entourage who have brought along what specie they could afford, and we still have trade goods to sell. I suggest we ask for further donations, before we beggar ourselves needlessly.”

So Raivis went with Prince Ivan to make the rounds of the other members of the Entourage to explain the cause, and Toris and Ludwig went to sell off as many of the district’s trade goods as the local markets could take in. They spent a spirited late morning and early afternoon in the city arguing prices, but raw materials were easily priced, and by and large people knew good craftsmanship when they saw it. It helped that they were of a style and decorations that no one was used to seeing, and people would pay more for the novelty.

When everyone reconvened a couple of hours before dinner, they’d come up with another 200 kilograms for a total of 750. Since _his_ district’s trade goods had raised the majority of that amount, Ludwig insisted on returning as much of his friends’ money as he could. This set off another round of bargaining, concluded only when the others agreed to donate only half of their money, and that Ludwig would keep every bit of the remaining 24-and-some kilos of silver for himself, and not try to pay them back, since he was using _all_ of his money for this.

Toris resolved to have a fight with Ludwig, later, about sending back to Feliks and Eduard for more silver. The district could bear it, and no one would begrudge the price of freedom for a slave.

“It’s just as well that it’s mostly your money, Ludwig,” Roderich said, with a sly hint in the tone that Toris was pretty sure he knew the cause for. “Only one person can hold a ransom contract at a time, and it sounds like such a heroically romantic thing to rescue someone from slavery, doesn’t it?”

Ludwig glared at him, and then asked Toris how the hell they were supposed to get 726 kilograms of silver to the housekeeper.


	6. Chapter 6

Feliciano had already been in knots over the coming evening when the housekeeper sent down a commanding note with a maid for him to put on the illusion and report to his office.

People _stared_ at him as he went by, when they weren’t giving him snide looks or whispering behind hands. He’d heard some the rumors going around, and they’d gained truth as they went along. _Everyone_ knew what he was doing by now, and the only thing worse than the speculation about just how much and what sort of sex they _thought_ that he’d given the Krasniviy delegation the night before was that they all thought that he was doing it of his own free will.

Alfred had even come by and pounded on his locked door, demanding an explanation about the rumors. Feliciano had been too scared to even try talking to him.

Lord Ludwig was in the housekeeper’s office when he arrived, and there was a transfer of contract paper on the desk, with the ink still wet. The housekeeper looked at Feliciano as he walked in, and smiled with a sharp, nasty edge to it.

“His Highness the Duke _thoroughly enjoyed_ your company last night,” he told Feliciano, as he handed over the little ruby chip gold pendant that keyed the mage slavings’ magic. “And he’s bought your ransom contract. You’d best keep him happy.”

A _Duke?_ There’d been absolutely no indication of that sort of rank the night before, and the man had spent most of it unable to keep his eyes away and it had seemed like everything was going to be okay, maybe, at least for this little bit of time when there was only the Krasniviy delegation; but the court had been gossiping this morning and right now Duke Ludwig looked cold and hard and it was easy to imagine him using that pendant to get what he wanted.

For one fleeting second, Feliciano wondered if he could convince Toris Laurinaitis to speak for him- but he was a _war mage,_ even if he was retired, and there were lots of awful things that happened in wars and who _knew_ what he’d done before he went to Krasnivya. Something like this might not have even been the worst of what he’d done.

The duke pocketed the pendant, picked up Feliciano’s ransom contract, and put a hand on his back to guide him out of the room.

Once they got out into the hallways, people started with the looking and the tittering again, and Feliciano focused on the illusion because if he could pretend that they weren’t seeing _him,_ not really; if he could pretend that the basis of this illusion wasn’t a private happiness he’d been forced to put on display; if he could keep the illusion looking unaffected and even happy then maybe everyone would _stop-_

Duke Ludwig looked sharply at the nearest knot of courtiers, shutting them up, and moved from having a hand on Feliciano’s back to putting his arm around his waist- protectively, possessively.

Feliciano tried to brace himself, but when they got back to the Krasniviy’s quarters they didn’t go for the room from the night before but straight into the duke’s private suite, and he felt his resolve crumble quickly.

There was a table with a packet of dark leather on it, and two chairs. The page boy from last night was standing next to it. The duke pointed to one of the chairs, and Feliciano sat down obediently, trembling inside.

Duke Ludwig picked up the leather packet and opened it to reveal a set of sharp, shiny, silvery tools; and Feliciano went from trembling on the inside to shaking on the outside.

 _“Please,”_ he begged, still unable to cry and now unable to get out of the chair, because that point had been wordless but it had been an order all the same. “Please I didn’t want to lie to you I’m sorry I won’t do it again please don’t I’ll do whatever you want I promise-”

The duke looked extremely alarmed about this, for some reason.

“Just calm down,” he said, picking out a small blade, and Feliciano _hated_ that he settled, and felt like letting the duke do whatever he wanted with him.

The duke moved behind him, the small blade still in hand, and Feliciano had a flash of a thought, a vision of slow cuts and blood on the floor the duke owned his ransom contract and had the key to the mage slavings he could kill him if that’s what he wanted to do-

He felt his hair being swept away from his neck, and fingers on his spine. He should have gone cold all over, but he didn’t. He couldn’t care about it.

“I’m going to try not to cut you,” the duke told him, and _why?_

Feliciano felt the pressure of the blade against his skin and against the gold filigree of the choker collar, and wondered what sort of enchantments had been placed in the blade that he was now using it to add to what was already in the slavings. The tools looked silver, even if he hadn’t seen silver tools that sharp before, and there was a lot of magic you could do with silver, if you weren’t cripplingly specialized like he was.

The blade went from pressure to biting, and Feliciano felt the cut into skin. He twitched away, and the duke snapped: “Don’t move!”

Feliciano froze in place, and wondered if he’d be left to bleed as a punishment.

There was other movement around his neck, a slithering, and- that felt like but it _couldn’t_ be-

He heard the door of the suite open, and then Toris Laurinaitis’s voice.

“Oh, you got him already,” the war mage said, and the duke came around where Feliciano could see him again and put Feliciano’s hands flat on the table. “Good, everyone’s talking so much that it would be an uncomfortable walk about now. I got your things from your room, where do you want them?”

“Just a minute,” the duke said to him, and lowered the blade again. It was a swift press this time, and there was more blood, but this time Feliciano could see the gold filigree cut and feel the lessening of the slavings. He dropped the illusion, because he _could_ now, and started crying.

That got another look of alarm from Duke Ludwig.

“Just a second!” he exclaimed, just a bit frantically. “I’m almost done, there’s just this one more-”

A last cut, and Feliciano was free of the impossible. He was sobbing now and had gone back to shaking, and missed Toris’s touch to the back of his neck that healed the cut there, and the ones on the tops of his wrists.

 _“How,”_ he wheezed. “Slavings are permanent-”

“Not against- I don’t know how you say it in Zaloti, we call it _‘steel’_ -”

“There isn’t a word for it in anything but Krasniviy,” Toris cut in gently. “It’s a type of iron alloy, Feliciano.”

It was just as well he’d been so terrified already for the past day and a half, because it meant he didn’t have enough energy left over to be terrified to hear that the Krasniviy used _that,_ and used it enough and knew enough about it to make _multiple types_ of alloys of it- just mildly scared.

“Iron,” Feliciano said, eyesight too watery and head to stuffed up to really notice what was going on any longer. He felt like that might be a good thing. _“Iron. Mage-killer.”_

“It’s better than _bronze,_ ” he heard Duke Ludwig grumble; and then Toris spoke again.

“I think it would be a good idea to sleep this off,” he suggested. “I could make you go under, Feliciano.”

He couldn’t find it in him to speak- only nod in agreement. The loss of consciousness was a blessing.

* * *

“It is done?” Ivan asked, when Roderich tapped on his doorframe.

The Winter Diplomat nodded.

“Feliciano is asleep in Ludwig’s rooms. Ludwig is melting the slavings down for the gold, and Toris and Raivis have started packing. Everyone else is, too.”

“Good,” Ivan said. “Then I believe I shall go to dinner.”

He caused a bit of a stir, showing up alone after all of the drama and gossip of the day. The King of Neima smiled at him as he sat down for dinner- probably happy about the unexpected windfall of silver.

It didn’t take long for the man to silence the table to make an announcement.

“It pleases us to deliver the news that the ransom contract of Feliciano Vargas has been bought by Duke Ludwig of Krasnivya,” the king announced, and Ivan spent a moment to wonder when and who had decided to promote Ludwig’s title-in-translation from _‘Lord’_ to _‘Duke’_. It had probably been the sudden materialization of so much silver. “We thank Prince Ivan of Krasnivya for having the duke in attendance on this trip, so that he could be here to relieve us of our burden.”

Oh, wonderful. He’d been hoping for an opening like this- it was the entire reason he’d made himself come to dinner, when all he really wanted to do was start packing, like the rest of the Entourage was.

“And our delegation thanks the King of Neima in turn,” Ivan told the room, pitching his voice in the formal, yet light and carrying tone of southern monarchical public conversation. “For providing us with such a learning opportunity about the customs of the south. We had no idea that southern hospitality involved the royal sponsorship of in-court prostitution, nor that such ordered activities could be enforced by these _‘mage slavings’_.”

A flurry of furious whispering broke out up and down the table. The King of Neima’s smile had frozen in fury-tinged disbelief.

Ivan happily carried on with his ignorant foreigner ploy.

“I am assured that such things are an ancient and complicated art, and I congratulate the talents of Neima’s mages, that they are so well practiced. Such magical artifice is not found in Krasnivya, and nor are the practices of slavery and ransom contracts. If we have given offence in our reception of such strange and foreign customs, I apologize on behalf of all my people- but I also behoove His Royal Majesty to consider that the state of our welcome has been such that we find ourselves to be unable to stand the anticipation of what may await us further south, and so we are hastening our departure for the morrow. Rest assured, we shall spread the news of Neiman hospitality to all the courts we stay at for this next year. I am certain that their service will be- _incomparable._ ”


	7. Chapter 7

Ludwig had honestly not expected to get out of the Neiman capital without a fight, but the King of Neima was apparently humiliated enough, and the revelation of what he’d approved had caused enough of a disturbance amongst the nobility, that they were able to leave court and the city boundaries without challenge.

Usually, Ludwig would ride up at the front of the Entourage, with Ivan; but today, as they passed through the Neiman countryside on their way south, he had someone to look after. He dropped his horse back further to peer into the covered wagon he’d slept in after renewing his district’s contract with the ghosts and refuge spirits of the taiga.

“Are you sure he’s going to be all right?” he asked Toris. His bodyguard was sitting on the backboard of the wagon, so he could be close at hand when Feliciano woke up.

“He’ll be fine,” Toris assured him. “I just thought it would be a good idea for him to keep sleeping for the time being. He’s had a bit of trauma the last day or two, and not being awake should even it out some. Anyway- it’ll probably be a nice surprise for him to wake up with Neima’s capital far behind.”

That seemed reasonable to Ludwig, but he was still worried. The illusion the man had dropped in the suite really hadn’t been that far off of reality- Feliciano was a slight man, all of soft lines and a face that would probably be kind and cheerful when it wasn’t calm in sleep or twisted in fear and tears-

Toris was looking at him searchingly, and Ludwig realized that he was going fixated again, and blushed.

“Look- it was right of you to buy the contract and get him out of that,” Toris said, his tone surprisingly serious and not teasing. “And I didn’t want to say much, just in case people got scared off. But I’m not sure you fully understand what holding a mage’s ransom contract _means._ ”

“Did you _lie-_ ”

“Maybe misled a bit,” Toris admitted. “But it was more like… not saying the whole truth. Look, we’re stopping for lunch; get off your horse and come sit with me. I’ll explain.”

The Entourage was far too large to reasonably stop at an inn when they were in need of food, so lunch was had whenever a large enough field was found. Advance riders had found one about half an hour ago and started setting up, so now that the main body of the Entourage was here, the warmed food was ready for eating. Ludwig and Toris sat together next to the wagon.

“So, the thing about a ransom contract,” Toris said. “Especially with mages’ ones, is that they never really go away. Now, I don’t know exactly what you were planning with Feliciano-”

“We’re going to Zaloto,” Ludwig said. “He’s from Zaloto. If he doesn’t want to get off somewhere before there, then he can get off at home.”

“See, I thought be something like that,” Toris sighed. “Look, Ludwig- he was stuck in Neima because his family couldn’t afford to pay his contract, and it was already severely devalued. The lowest a mage’s ransom contract is legally allowed to go is 1,000 pounds silver pure. For that, you can buy a good commission in any southern army and outfit a thousand-man company well. I know it doesn’t sound like a lot to you, but a thousand people is a lot for an agrarian society that doesn’t have steam engines to take heavy labor. That’s an estate’s worth of young men- or even more, in some places.”

Ludwig frowned.

“You _buy_ military positions?”

“War’s expensive,” Toris said. “And a standing army is the worst expense of all. The governments down here defray the cost by letting the local lords, or anybody else with enough money, pay for equipment and initial hiring. After that, the government only has to pay wages, specialty equipment, food, and whatever extra manpower it needs. A volunteer-draft army like Krasnivya’s, with government-issued equipment and government-given training and officers, would be horrifically authoritarian to people here. The nobility think of the ability to levee their residents to create army units as a right and a _privilege._ It’s power to them, too, because if the government _has_ to accept them. If they don’t take a raised unit, then the nobles will make back their investment by raiding.”

“And that’s why you shouldn’t give them that power in the first place!”

“Well, that’s how they do it,” Toris told him. “Now, I don’t know what _exactly_ 1,000 pounds silver pure would be worth in Krasnivya, because silver is worth a hell of a lot more there, but in equivalency it’s _probably_ something like the cost of building a two- or three-furnace.”

A two-furnace greenhouse was the smallest version of such a structure there was. Digging the furnace-cellars where the town’s forges or bakeries or kilns or smithies or other heat-producing industries that would go to warm the ground was _expensive_ in time and labor in permafrost, even more than the making of the steel framing and the large glass panes. For an average-sized rural town of about two hundred or three hundred people, who already had some form of income, the cost could be raised over the period of a couple of years, depending; and maybe even in one if the owner of the district manor contributed. Or a loan from the government could be taken out by the entire town, and paid back over a period of five to ten years.

Greenhouses were an expensive-but-necessary undertaking, which Ludwig knew very well. The soil in most of his district was too poor to get any food from, even after it had been thawed- though if certain other districts came through with their promises of investigation into better fertilizers, or hardier strains of crops…

Besides the point.

“A mage is worth a _greenhouse?_ ”

“1,000 pounds silver pure is the price of an _untrained child,_ ” Toris corrected. “A fully-trained adult is worth 9,000 pounds silver pure, usually. Someone like me- I was _really_ good at my job, Ludwig, and I got away to Krasnivya before I was ever captured and had one of these attached to me- but I bet I could have gone for 12,000 pounds silver pure. Maybe more.”

Feliciano’s ransom contract had been a small fortune by Krasniviy standards already, only born out through luck, potentially-unwise spending, and ingrained cultural outrage. Ludwig couldn’t even _imagine_ trying to pay 9,000 pounds of pure silver, let alone _12,000._ He wasn’t even sure that there was that much pure silver in the entire _country._ His manor had only had so much to spare because the copper and galena mines that had been native to the original district land he’d been given were _old,_ and the Red Palace had released a percentage of the silver byproduct the area had always sent as taxes when it had become a manorial district instead of undifferentiated territory. When Ludwig had provided for the expansion of the mines, and purchased more land to sink new mines or expand other old ones, the increase in silver had been exponential- but still nothing to the standards of the south, apparently.

“Anyway, like I was saying,” Toris continued. “Ransom contracts never really go away. Part of that’s social, and for the nobles’ ransom contracts, that’s usually it. The price of your contract reflects heavily on your social status. It’s influenced by how much the original maker of the contract thinks your family can pay out, how valuable they think _you_ are, and how powerful the contract-maker is. It affects mages too, but it’s less about how much anyone will think will pay for you and how good you are at what you do. If you had one, and it got paid off, then you can use the price of it to negotiate salaries later on- don’t look at me like that, it’s part of the system.”

“I don’t like it,” Ludwig told him grumpily. “What about the part that isn’t social?”

Toris didn’t say anything for a few minutes, staring out across the field and ignoring his lunch soup.

“Thirty years or so ago,” he said. “When everybody realized that the skirmishes and raids were turning into constant war, the mages started to reorganize. It used to be that we did just about everything- but nowadays, it’s almost all fighting. We used to have artisan mages, weather mages, bards, smithy mages, court mages- we still have most of those skills, but when the master-apprentice system was phased out in favor of standardized education in the Colleges, people stopped specializing like that. We’ve lost the practicals of the higher-level or more technical skills. But no one was paying a living wage for anything but war mages and maintenance on the systems that were already in place-”

He stopped, and shook his head.

“I was the last class at Erzenai, the oldest College and the last to keep to the teaching of this, to learn the classics. Mage history and lore. That was over a decade ago, I was… twelve? Thirteen? Herakles Karpousi taught that class. He was the librarian and archivist for Erzenai, and then over the harvest break, he got caught up in a battle as he was going to investigate reports that a particularly old text had turned up, and got a ransom contract put on him. He was a powerful enough mage that he escaped whoever had caught him, and ran away. The rumor was that he went to Zaloto, but it wasn’t confirmed until years later. I’d graduated, and I was employed in an army out in the field, and- I was _the best,_ Ludwig. Herakles Karpousi was the best of the classical-trained mages, the generation before us, and I’m the best of this one. But we got the news that Herakles Karpousi had died in Zaloto, of no apparent physical cause. A mage went out to confirm, but we all knew it already- it was running with that contract on him that did it.”

Ludwig sucked in a sharp breath.

“That’s when _I_ ran,” Toris told him. It sounded like he was making an effort to keep his tone even. “If I got a contract, someone would definitely buy it. I had- have- my own money, a lot of it, but I wasn’t sure I’d have enough to buy it _myself._ Some king or other would probably buy it out, and I’d end up traded around. I’d have to fight and kill people I _knew._ Friends of mine. And I wouldn’t be able to go home, and- _no one_ who goes to fight escapes getting a ransom contract, these days. Even the mages who try to stay out of it, like Master Karpousi, run a high risk. The Colleges were cloistering themselves, last I heard, so the Masters and students couldn’t get accidentally caught. They were buying up the contracts of old students to go out and hunt for new ones, but otherwise they wouldn’t leave. I couldn’t _stand_ the thought of getting a contract, and I didn’t have the guts to kill myself; so when I finally ended up in a losing battle- I ran for my life. We were fighting in Arsouie- Arshalva, before Tougnon conquered it- so I went through Uteyna and Bochec and Naprah-Vraslau and then I was in Neima, and the war wasn’t in Neima but no one knew how long Uteyna and the others were going to hold out so I kept going and then I got to the taiga, and I figured no one would ever think to come looking for me in _there-_ ”

“And the refuge spirits let you through,” Ludwig finished for him. “Because the only thing you wanted was somewhere safe.”

“Yeah,” Toris said, and managed to crack a smile. “And then me and my horse burst out the other side of the taiga onto your lands, and I thought I’d gone mad, or gone to hell, because the sun never seemed to set and there was nothing to burn to make a fire in the snow wastes. Some miners found me half-frozen to death huddled up in the mouth of a mineshaft, and dragged me home to warm up, and called Feliks- and- well, I wouldn’t have had any idea at all what had happened if I hadn’t had that class with Master Karpousi.”

“Feliks isn’t a mage,” Ludwig said doubtfully, almost making it a question.

“No, he’s not,” Toris agreed. “But- Ludwig, I had a year class, once or twice a week, with Master Karpousi, about mage history and lore. That’s a discipline that takes _decades_ of study to be truly proficient in. There’s no one alive who knows everything he did. It hurt him to cut down his field to what he could manage in that time, but he got the important bits. That’s why I know what I do about iron, and mage slavings, and could make the suggestion that steel might work against them. You probably would have tried it anyway, but the point is I don’t think that any other mage would even _consider_ the possibility. Iron’s basically non-existent down here because no one mines it, but it wouldn’t be impossible for someone to hunt down a surface deposit and start exploiting it. The mage slavings and the ransom contracts and what happened with me and Feliks- it’s all the same sort of thing. It’s a soul-bond.”

That last bit, Ludwig assumed Toris had translated literally into Krasniviy, because it didn’t make a whole lot of sense.

“It’s a magical thing, but it’s a mystical sort of thing too,” Toris told him. “It’s why the only other thing that’s ever broken a mage slaving is a god- anyway. The Colleges- some of them are really, _really_ old. Erzenai’s the oldest. They were like- mage clans, I guess. Fully-trained mages would go out and find apprentices, and they’d become part of the mage College, even if nobody got exactly the same training. It was considered an asset to the group. When your master took you on, he’d make a soul-bond. It would tie the two of you enough that the master would know if the apprentice had gotten in trouble, and there was just enough give in that sort for the master to be able to shut down an apprentice for a couple of minutes if they were going to hurt themselves. And then once the training was done, the bond would be transferred to the College as a whole. It made the whole thing a brotherhood, a clan- and you could transfer it, sure, but you couldn’t _get rid_ of it. It was really low-key, basically didn’t do anything but give you a negligible power boost- but it was your credentials. I don’t know if anyone even does that any longer, now that the Colleges are schools.”

“What happened with you and Feliks?” Ludwig asked.

“There are other sorts of soul-bonds too,” Toris explained. “The master and College one was just the most common, up until ransom contracts got really big. Mage slavings are the strongest, and the most- unbalanced, I guess. The owner of the key is the one that gets all the benefits. The other person just gets forced into following commands.”

_“Forced?”_

“There’s a reason they’re illegal,” he said gravely. “I don’t know what it’s like or how deep it goes- Master Karpousi held that they could force emotions, but he also admitted that there’s no real evidence to prove or disprove it either way in the records. That was just what he thought, since they were so emphatically _not allowed._ Feliciano’s the first person in centuries to be subjected to it. That anybody really knows of, anyway. But- me and Feliks.”

Ludwig was glad they were moving onto that topic, and even gladder that the Entourage had shown up exactly when it had. Mage slavings- _total control of someone else,_ by everything holy.

“Soul-bonds are most commonly made, to whatever degree of strength. But sometimes they just _happen._ It used to be a lot more common, but nowadays, most people would say it _never_ happens. But it happened with me and Feliks, when we first saw each other.”

Toris smiled, brightly.

“We couldn’t stop staring at each other for _days._ We were both totally useless for anything else, until we adjusted to always being aware of each other. It’s… you just get _strong feelings_ about the other person. Like- I did something _really stupid_ and locked myself in the icehouse, and suddenly Feliks got anxious enough about the icehouse that he had to go look at it _right now_. _He_ thought it must have been about the manor’s meat provisions, but when I asked why he was there once he’d let me out, before I’d almost frozen to death _again,_ he couldn’t actually justify it. And when I got to the manor, I knew _exactly_ where everything was, even though I’d never been there before and nobody had told me about the layout, because Feliks knew exactly where everything was. Even now, we both know _exactly_ how long it would take to get to each other, and which direction to go. That sort of a soul-bond… it’s security. It’s what the whole thing is really supposed to be about, but it’s usually not.”

Toris looked at him, considering.

“I’m pretty sure _you’ve_ got one, actually,” he told Ludwig, surprising him. “How long back to the edge of your lands, if you took this wagon?”

Ludwig looked at it, considering speed and the amount of distance they’d already done, and long it had taken to get this far.

“A month and a half,” he estimated- except it felt more certain than that.

Toris pointed to one of the short Krasniviy horses.

“On that?”

“Nineteen days,” Ludwig said.

“Walking?”

He couldn’t justify this answer with something about estimates and experience- things were too far away in Krasnivya to _walk_ to them, except if they were local, and that was besides the fact that it was cold enough that a day’s walk could actually _kill_ you.

“About three months,” Ludwig told him. “ _Why_ do I know that?”

“Contract with the refuge spirits and the ghosts,” Toris said. “I thought it was just a verbal agreement, but you and Erzsébet were totally out of it when we showed up. It explains how the Foresters can _always_ be found if they’re hurt, and how the refuge spirits and the ghosts know who has rights for logging, and why _none_ of the Foresters or border district residents _ever_ get lost in the taiga, no matter if they’ve been in that particular section of it or not before. All of your residents have a share in the soul-bond you hold for the district, Ludwig; and each Forester has one individually. It’s really the only explanation.”

This wasn’t as surprising or disturbing as Ludwig thought it should probably be- but he’d already known that the contract with the refuge spirits and the ghosts was something that was more spiritual than anything else.

“Actually, it’s probably one of our best assets right now,” Toris said thoughtfully. “The taiga will know if you’re in trouble, or if you die. I bet your district and the Foresters will know if anything happens with you or Erzsébet within a couple of hours after it does. We might actually get a rescue party out of it, if it’s bad enough.”

“I’d rather not find out,” Ludwig said. “So, the ransom contracts are also soul-bonds? But they _do_ go away, because you can pay them off-”

“If you pay yours off yourself,” Toris interrupted him. “It doesn’t go _away,_ it just sort of turns in on itself. You end up bonded to yourself. If your family pays it off, or one of your friends, then you’re bonded with whichever one of them came to pay. The money is part of the… spell, I guess it is, but it’s not what you’d usually think of as a spell.”

Ludwig frowned, not liking the implications he was thinking of. Toris looked at him apologetically.

“The lowest bound the ransom contract spell is allowed to take a transfer of bond is 1,000 pounds of silver pure,” he said. “But it doesn’t have to _actually_ be that- it can be goods or services in equivalency. _Theoretically,_ you can work a ransom contract off, but in practice it’s basically impossible. Saving your contract holder’s life can count, but usually people don’t let that happen. The only way to transfer it without payment is that the contract holder can will a contract to someone else, and it will transfer when they die.”

“So there’s _no way_ to get rid of this?” Ludwig asked. He was running out of options, and he didn’t like it. “If Feliciano’s family can’t pay out his contract, and the King of Neima couldn’t sell it to anyone- I don’t _want_ to _own_ someone, Toris! Are you sure iron won’t work?”

“Absolutely not,” Toris told him. “It worked on the mage slavings because those have to have a physical anchor- and you were the key holder. You could do what you wanted with it.”

“But now I’m the contract holder-”

Toris sighed.

“The mage slavings are unbalanced, remember? _All_ the power resides in the key holder- if the key holder wants it gone, it can go. It takes that full-hearted and unequivocal decision _and iron_ to get rid of it. You can’t _do_ that with contracts. The other soul-bonds are more like being married.”

_“Married?”_

“Well, it’s a bit of a mystical thing,” Toris reminded him. “Marriage is also a spiritual-mystical bond like that. It’s not the same power dynamic or- look, it’s an analogy. A marriage is you get a god to bond people, and only the god can dissolve it again. You can keep making more of them indefinitely, but usually none of the others _go away._ There _one_ story, one _old_ story, that claims that back when ransom contracts were rare, before the war, that a contract holder and the mage under contract fell in love and got married, and it destroyed the ransom contract soul-bond because the god replaced it with the marriage one instead. Nobody even really thinks it’s _true._ ”

“But it _could_ work?” Ludwig pressed.

“You are _not_ marrying him because you think it _might_ void the other bond!” Toris exclaimed. “That’s no good reason to marry someone! And if you’re _wrong,_ and it doesn’t work, but he leaves _anyway-_ he’ll still _die!_ It’ll be _slow,_ and you’ll be back in Krasnivya where he can’t get to you to _stop_ it, and his family will have to _watch it happen,_ Ludwig!”

“But it’s _wrong!_ ”

“It’s-”

Toris sighed.

“It is to _you,_ ” he said. “And it is to Krasnivya. But he grew up with this, just like me. It’s not- he probably thinks it’s not fair, because he knows he’ll never get out of it. He probably doesn’t _like_ it. But when you and the other native-born Krasniviy say _‘wrong’,_ you mean that the entire idea of a ransom contract is an abomination and it should never happen. If southerners say it’s wrong, they mean that it’s unfair that it happened to _this particular_ mage, not that the entire _thing_ is wrong. It really _did_ use to work, I promise- there used to be so few that a mage’s College could buy them back, or it only applied to nobles who were _also_ mages, who had enough money, or their family had enough money, that _they_ could pay it. That’s still how the nobility does it- a ransom contract is a _good thing,_ because it gets you an in in foreign courts. But now they’re the standard for captured mages, and they’re so common that ransoms have inflated, and now most mages _can’t_ get their ransom contracts paid, and it’s a way for sides in this war to get and keep mages, so they don’t get annihilated by some army that can afford to hire more mages than they can; or a way to make a lot of money in an emergency, because most contracts aren’t like Feliciano’s. Most of them, if the contracts are on the market- a mage can go through five different armies in a year. One battle, my army caught and then bought a mage who had been in _fifteen_ in last six months. She wasn’t even bothered by it. _The south doesn’t think ransom contracts are **wrong,** _ Ludwig; and you’re not going to be able to get Feliciano out of his with you.”


	8. Chapter 8

Feliciano woke up with a jolt, and it took a few seconds to realize that the jolt hadn’t been _him._ He was in a wagon- on the road, by the sound of it, there were wheels and horses’ hooves- and the wagon bed was filled with pillows and blankets, with a canvas covering making walls and a ceiling a tall man could stand upright under.

What- why was he on the road how long had he been unconscious had the duke sold him off to someone else-

The wagon jolted again, and stopped. It sounded like everyone else was stopping, too.

“Hello.”

Feliciano sat up, pushing the heavy blankets off himself. Toris Laurinaitis was sitting next to him in the wagon bed, on top of some cushions. He was doing some sort of sewing.

“These are for you,” he said, noticing Feliciano looking at them.

“I have my own clothes,” Feliciano protested, and went frantic for a moment as he wondered whether they’d gotten rid of his things while he was out- but his bags were tucked up against the front of the wagon.

“Sure,” Toris said. “But they’re not good enough for Entourage- and anyway, you’re part of the Second Magnate’s household now.”

He finished his stitch, tying and cutting off the thread, and shook out what he’d been working on. It was a long, full-sleeved shirt in yellow cream, appliqued with red-embroidered black ribbon on the short standing collar, around the cuffs and the low-hanging hem, and in a sort of _‘H’_ on the front with a vertical panel of four side-by-side ribbons running from the center of the collar to the crossbar. There was an attached belt in the same yellow cream cloth.

“Yellow and black are Ludwig’s colors,” Toris explained. “The red is because he’s second to the Prince. This is a Krasniviy-style shirt- I took in one of mine, and then I traded for your pants and boots and socks.”

He tilted his head at the pile of cloth next to him- loose gray pants, brown leather cavalry boots with wide tops, and white wooly patterned things that must be the _‘socks’_ he’d mentioned.

“There should be a red coat to go with them, properly,” he continued. “With Ludwig’s arms on the back, since you’re definitely on the manor service side of the household, not the guard side. But nobody brought any of those, so we’ll have to find one the next time we’re in a big enough town. And you’ll have to get a few other pairs of everything but the boots.”

“Where _are_ we?” Feliciano asked, leaving the mental hurdle of receiving a full household livery with multiple sets of the _same outfit_ to be dealt with later.

Toris shrugged.

“Somewhere in south Neima,” he said. “Farming territory- not sure where exactly. We left the capital yesterday morning, you’ve been out since the evening before that. We’re going to Naprah-Vraslau, then we’ll be taking stock of the currents of war and deciding where we’re going next. My vote is Arshalva and then Uteyna and then down the Unko to take the sea route to Zaloto, but they might decide to push into Tougnon and try for the capital-”

There was a hard rapping on one of the wood struts that made the frame for the canvas, and someone said something loudly in Krasniviy.

Toris tossed the shirt at him.

“Get changed, and come find me outside,” he ordered, and ducked out of the wagon.

He stuck his head back through the canvas flaps a second later.

“Socks go on over the pants, under the boots.”

Feliciano took the opportunity of having to change clothes, and stow his own back into his bags, to make sure that all his things were there. He even dug down into the bottom of his smallest pack, the emergency one that he would have grabbed if there had been a fire, or the one he’d keep if he got robbed, to pull out the leather wallet that had been sitting there since he’d been captured by the Neiman.

He opened it up and carefully checked over the bronze and copper jewelry, noting what needed polishing to get rid of tarnish. It was all still there, and he hid it down at the bottom of his pack again, wondering if maybe later, he could sneak wearing a ring, or the necklace under his shirt. Neima frowned heavily on jewelry on men, but in Zaloto one or two small things were perfectly acceptable.

Anyway, jewelry was wearable money, and easy to run away with.

Socks were strange, but comfortable, and the secondhand boots fit well enough but Feliciano still felt out-of-place and vaguely alarmed about being in them- he didn’t have enough money for this, poor men didn’t get leather boots and he couldn’t shake the feeling that even though he’d been _told_ to wear them, he was somehow doing something that would get him in trouble.

The Winter Prince’s train- his entourage, that’s what Toris had said, he’d have to try to remember that- was quite large, but Feliciano was put more in mind of Fulgradian trading caravans than anything. There were lots of wagons with canvas tarps tied over them to protect their contents, and everybody but the wagon-drivers were mounted on the furry Krasniviy horses with the weird long, thick fringe hanging down over their hooves.

Feliciano looked around for Toris, and had to duck nervously around horses. He was especially careful around the driver’s seats of the wagons, because they had long staffish things on hooks or in holders out _right there,_ where _anyone_ could touch them. At first he’d avoided them because he’d assumed they were the Krasniviy version of a mage’s staff, with their pre-loaded spells for quick, destructive use- but then he accidentally brushed one, and instead of feeling a little tendril hooking into his magic, it was a cold, blank spot.

There was _iron_ in those things, and it drove Feliciano to get away to the side of the road, where he wouldn’t be in danger of _touching_ them any longer.

It was a decent vantage point, and it let him spot Toris, up at the front of the group, with the nobles of the delegation and the page boy- who looked older on top of a horse, in armor. Feliciano went over to them nervously, not totally sure if he was allowed to be there or not.

He got friendly smiles when the group spotted him, and this was so _strange._

“M’be _he_ kn’ws,” Lord Berwald said, in his absolutely impenetrable Zaloti.

“Hey,” the page boy said, and pointed down the road. “Advance riders say there’s a huge group of people that way about half an hour. Doesn’t look like an army to them, but they’ve got no idea who they are or what’s going on.”

“Is it a fair?” Feliciano asked. It was the right time of year for autumn fairs.

“A what?” Lord Timo asked.

“No,” Toris provided. Evidently, Krasnivya didn’t _do_ fairs, which was yet another weird thing to keep track of. “Didn’t sound like one from the description. Could be, I guess, but I’d _hope_ that the guards would be able to tell a bunch of people shopping from some sort of unruly mob.”

 _‘Unruly mob’_ sparked a bit of memory.

“What road is this?” Feliciano asked Toris. “You said we were going to Naprah-Vraslau, but is this the Royal Road or the Cheka Road?”

“Cheka Road,” Toris told him. “It’s less direct, but I thought it would be less crowded.”

“Oh, you should have taken the Royal Road,” Feliciano said. “Tougnon took Bochech about a month and a half ago, because the armies spent a whole _year_ fighting in Kuon Nhabac. They’ve got some new warlord there, who threw off the Toungnese _and_ kept off the Qiansungan _and_ managed to take a whole lot of land from both. _I_ heard the warlord is recreating Tien Ninh, and that the guerillas got to the traditional borders _two_ months ago, _and_ that Gazi Shehir recognized them with an official treaty. The court was all complaining about how there were a bunch of refugees camped out across the Cheka Road, disrupting trade and such.”

“Kuon Nhabac is _not_ on the map,” Duke Ludwig muttered darkly, glaring at the large sheet of- maybe that was parchment? it had folding lines you weren’t supposed to _do_ that to parchment- and Feliciano flinched a little. Toris’s horse sidled over to him, and the war mage was giving him a look. He wasn’t sure if it that supposed to be reassuring, or a warning. “ _Or_ Gazi Shehir.”

“Could- could I see the map?” Feliciano asked, voice quavering. “Your Highness?”

The duke frowned at him a little.

“No _‘Highness’_ ,” he said, handing over the map.

Feliciano took it carefully. It didn’t _feel_ like parchment, or vellum. What _was_ this?

“I’m sorry, sir.”

The duke looked like he was going to say something else, but evidently decided not to. Feliciano waited a few seconds more anyway, just to be sure.

Then he looked at the map. It was a little puzzling, because the letters were written in a funny sort of calligraphy, but eventually he recognized _‘Arsouie’_.

“Kuon Nhabac is about here,” he said, pointing to a spot on the map south of Arsouie, further down the river Liaze in an area the map had labeled as part of Qiansung.

Now that he looked at the lines againand realized that that really really _really_ big part up north that didn’t look familiar was Krasnivya-

“Oh,” Feliciano said. “This is- this an old map.”

“I’ve only been in Krasnivya for four years!” Toris protested.

“But, see,” Feliciano said, indicating parts of the map. It was a lot easier to talk if he pretended he was just telling Toris. “Four years ago Lapsara lost control of Gazi Shehir-”

That was the inland and coast directly west of Zaloto, between the River Dienar, which ran from Lake Cheka between Neima and Tougnon to the sea, and the Unko River, one of the Dienar’s branches.

“-and almost all of western Neima and a lot of the eastern Fulgrad fell apart _completely-_ ”

That was a full hand’s width of space on the map.

“-because there were too many people trying to run there. It’s _still_ not stable, and the worst part is the northern area between Naprah-Vreslau and Dirna. Well, once you get out of Uteyna, Uteyna’s still fine except for some raiders along the north border. And then _three_ years ago, Gazi Shehir sponsored Saiha’s bid for independence from Qiansung, using money from Tougnon-”

“ _Saiha_ is free?” Toris asked in astonishment, staring at the spot where the Dienar and the Unko split on the map. “It’s been- what, three centuries!”

“Yeah,” Feliciano agreed. “About that. Anyway, _now_ they’re saying that Gazi Shehir asked for more from Tougnon than they needed, and they gave the rest over to the rebels’ warlord in Kuon Nhabac and the rest of old Tien Ninh-”

For the benefit of the Krasniviy, he circled the huge swath of land in the northwest of Qiansung with a finger.

“-and _that_ fight was all of _last_ year and most of this year, until the Tougnese got routed at Kuon Nhabac and had to retreat to Arsouie in… late May sometime, I’m pretty sure. And then in June Qiansung capitulated on the siege of Paizija-”

“They _besieged_ Paizija!”

“-and the Emperor of Qiansung gave up on keeping Tien Ninh, at least for now, and last week Matthieu told me he’d gotten word from his father that the _entire_ army showed up on the Tougnese border on a straight shot west of the capital. So Tien Ninh got Paizija and the Tougnese army is tied up in Bochech because they got angry about losing in Kuon Nhabac and now everybody has to run down to get between the Qiansungan army and the Tougnese capital. There might even be a winter campaign, I hear it’s warm down there.”

Now _Toris_ was glaring at the map.

“There’s been less border changing in _twenty years_ of these wars than the last _four!_ ”

“We were planning on going to Bochech,” Lord Roderich murmured.

“We’d better not,” Toris told him. “If Tougnon just smashed them this last season, and now they’re pulling out right away in a rush- it’s going to be absolute chaos. I don’t even think we should take the Dienar from Naprah-Vraslau. There’s a road from the Two Cities to Erzenai, and we can join a fleet from the satellite port _there_ instead. It will be a lot safer.”


	9. Chapter 9

Toris and Roderich had been very set against stopping with the refugee camp, which had annoyed Ivan greatly. Intellectually, Ludwig understood why they thought it was a good idea- there wasn’t any law enforcement in the camp, and they would have to stay on guard against gangs, or just desperate people who wanted their food.

But it rankled, a _lot._ Krasnivya was meant to be a refuge, and they were just going to _pass them by._

Toris looked at him for a long moment as the Entourage started to get moving again, and then looked down at Feliciano.

Unfortunately, Ludwig’s mushy feelings had been right. Feliciano _was_ still very pretty without the illusions, and there was something about the sight of him dressed in proper Krasniviy fashion that made him go all fluttery inside.

 _Stop that,_ he told his chest. It didn’t listen to him.

Toris said some things in Neiman to Feliciano, who nodded his head and then dashed off down the road.

Ludwig stared after him. He’d had no idea people could _run_ like that.

“Comes from not having snow everywhere all the time,” Toris told him with an amused smile. “I asked him to go find the likely organizers in the camp and tell them about Krasnivya. Probably nobody will come- everyone’s scared of the taiga, and Neima’s not going to want to let a mass migration get any further across the countryside- but some people might go. He’s going to meet us on the other side of the camp.”

And, once they’d gotten to other side of the refugee camp- there Feliciano was.

It made Ludwig uneasy. That had been the _perfect_ opportunity to run away, to make a bid for freedom- but the man hadn’t taken it. It suggested that Toris really _had_ been right about what he’d said.

Then things just got awkward.

“I can’t go back in the wagon?” Feliciano asked, voice full of trepidation. He and Toris had stopped by the mage on the side of the road. Ludwig was holding the reins of one of his vanner cob remounts.

“It’s meant for people who are sick,” Toris told him. “Only sick people don’t ride.”

“I’ve never been on horse before!” Feliciano protested, and sounded absolutely terrified. “Horses are for _rich people!_ ”

“You can’t walk in Krasnivya,” Ludwig told him, hoping that having an order of business would keep him from acting like an absolute _idiot._ “Not for very far. You’ll die. It’s too cold and there’s too much snow. You take heated sleighs, or you ride and stop at the shelter stations on the roads.”

He must have gone too far into Second Magnate mode, because Feliciano hunched in on himself like he’d done something wrong and Ludwig mentally reviewed what he’d just said and fretted about his tone. Was he supposed to equivocate more? That was a southern thing. Had he sounded angry? He didn’t think he’d sounded angry-

“Lisa is a nice horse,” Toris told Feliciano. “He’s very steady, and he’ll follow Sobaka wherever he goes. We’re not going to go fast, so you won’t fall off.”

In the end, Toris had to dismount to boost Feliciano into the saddle. When the guard cantered off back to the front of the Entourage, Feliciano clutched at the reins in terror. He must have clenched his knees too, because Lisa snorted and danced in place, stomping his hooves.

Ludwig reached over and wrenched Feliciano’s knee away from Lisa’s side- trainer’s instinct, from helping to watch over children on their first horses.

“You can’t sit like that, you’re hurting him and sending mixed messages,” he told the man, and then realized that he was _touching Feliciano._

He glanced up. Feliciano was looking at him, eyes wide; but now looked down at his saddle.

“I’m sorry, sir,” he said quietly.

“I’m not _‘sir’,_ I’m Ludwig,” Ludwig answered automatically, and snatched his hand away. He could _feel_ his face heating up- it wasn’t like knees were a particularly _intimate_ part of the body, but they were close enough to be the precursor to _sexual activities._

And the south was weird about sex. Toris had already told him that. If it was inappropriate to be alone with an adult you might like who could make their own decisions, then how much more inappropriate was it to _touch_ that same person without warning or permission?

He’d probably just made an _awful_ social blunder, and he tried to cover by focusing on Lisa.

“What were you trying to do?” he demanded. “Just relax.”

“But Toris said it would follow Sobaka, I thought it was going to run off!” Feliciano told him, staring fixedly at the spot between Lisa’s ears.

“Toris is riding Docinka,” Ludwig said. “Sobaka is _my_ horse.”

He nudged Sobaka into a walk, so Feliciano wouldn’t see how red he _knew_ he was. He heard Lisa start to follow behind, and resolved to keep his composure for the rest of the afternoon.

 _Technically_ he succeeded, because the Entourage stopped later than usual to put the most distance between them and the refugee camp, so it was evening when Toris and Raivis couldn’t be found, and Ludwig had to be the one to help Feliciano off his horse.

It was probably stunningly inappropriate. Ludwig _felt_ inappropriate, keeping a hand near Feliciano’s waist to steady him as he got his other leg over Lisa’s back, and then catching him when the move unbalanced him and he tumbled out of the saddle.

 _Then_ Toris showed up, and Ludwig went to hide his shame in Berwald and Timo’s tent until the one he shared with Toris and Raivis and _now Feliciano too_ , Sun save him, was ready; because Timo liked being in the advance party, so theirs was up already.

“We’re going to be sleeping _in the same place,_ ” he told the two of them, resorting to firm, illustrative hand motions because they were _not appreciating_ the severity of this situation.

Timo even had the gall to _laugh_ at him, so Ludwig threw a pillow at his face.

“Hopeless,” Berwald said, shaking his head.

They didn’t kick him out until Raivis came to find him, at least, even if they still clearly thought he was being ridiculous.

Somehow, he _did_ manage to sleep that night.

The next couple of days were much the same, though Ludwig managed to not run away to anyone else’s tent when they stopped, and he spent his free time while riding trying to figure out the problem of how to approach Feliciano. The damn ransom contract was hanging between them, and with what the Neiman had tried to do to him, it felt wrong to try courting.

But he wanted to, so badly.

At least, by the time they got to Naprah-Vraslau, seated right at the edge of the vast Cheka Lake, with the Dienar running right through it, diving the Two Cities, most of his friends had stopped the outright teasing. Ivan even looked somewhat worried.

Mostly, Ludwig just felt vindicated, because now people were realizing that this was a serious situation.

Unfortunately, _‘most of’_ and _‘outright’_ didn’t mean that there was _no_ teasing. They had more diplomacy to do in Naprah-Vraslau, meeting with the Duke of the Two Cities and getting the Entourage settled for the week they were planning on spending while Roderich and Ivan spoke with the duke and Toris talked to whoever he could find, trying to plot the safest route to Zaloto.

Toris’s revised plan after hearing Feliciano’s account of the last season’s war held the day. The Entourage was preparing to leave the next morning to take Mien’s Road to Erzenai when Erzsébet and Raivis turned up in Ludwig’s quarters, hauling Feliciano along.

“It took us the whole week to find a coat that looked enough like a _kozhukh_ to blend in!” Erzsébet told him, while he was still trying to restart his brain. “And even then we had to tell them how to alter it! Did you know they use _brass buttons_ here? It was a disaster, we had to go looking for wooden buttons and they just have no idea how to make proper ones this far south-”

“It’s,” Ludwig finally managed to say. “Very bright.”

“It’s the only shade of red they had enough of to re-dye it,” Raivis told him, voice _entirely_ too innocent, but Ludwig was having too much difficulty _not_ looking at the bright red of Feliciano’s new coat to think about glaring at him.

“It matches the embroidery on the shirt though,” Feliciano said, and _his_ innocent confusion, at least, wasn’t a ploy.

“At least they’re decent at needlework,” Erzsébet conceded of the southern tailors. “Turn around, Feli, show him what they managed to do.”

On Feliciano’s back, right on that absolutely indecent shade of red, was the Second Magnate’s black eagle on gold. Somehow Ludwig managed to be at least a little objective about it- whoever had been commissioned to embroider the appliqued panel had a very good eye for copying.

“Well,” Ludwig said faintly. “Very good. Thank you for taking him shopping, Erzsébet, Raivis. He has winter things, too?”

Erzsébet snorted derisively.

“We’re having someone in the Entourage take care of it,” Raivis told him. “Nothing the southerners will make will stand up as well as what we can do.”

That was true enough. They left, and Ludwig took the opportunity to sit down heavily and mentally curse Erzsébet and Raivis for doing _this_ to him.

Yes, that bright red was near-perfect match for the embroidery- but the embroidery was that particular shade of pure red for luck and protection. In small doses, it was perfectly acceptable.

But an _entire garment_ in that shade of red- red was for beauty, too. Even too much red embroidery on a plain shirt was indecent for public wear, unless you were at a casual party or trying to seduce someone or something.

Raivis and Erzsébet could only have done that on _purpose,_ and it was very nearly unforgivable. Bad enough that it was tying _him_ in knots- Feliciano’s coat was going to be screamingsexual intent to the rest of the Entourage. Oh, you could make an argument that it was _that_ red because it was for luck and protection, and someone who’d gotten out of Feliciano’s situation could really use some of that; but red coats for that purpose were only for small children, or the dying, or on quite rare occasions someone who needed every bit of help they could get, usually women who were expecting a difficult birth.

But considering that Feliciano wasn’t _any_ of those things-

He’d have to find a way to get it re-dyed five or six shades darker, back into appropriate range.

Ludwig reassigned finding new dye to his most urgent matter of business when he and Feliciano met Toris outside the city at a convenient riverside clearing. Toris gave the coat, and then him, a significant look.

“It wasn’t my idea!” he hissed to his guard. “It was Raivis and Erzsébet!”

Feliciano was still pretty hopeless on top of a horse, so this afternoon had been scheduled to get him more accustomed to riding Lisa before the Entourage set a fast pace along Mien’s Road to get to Erzenai before the snows hit. The prediction was for an early, harsh winter- nothing the Krasniviy weren’t used to, but it would drive all the southerners indoors and fill up the lodging if the Entourage didn’t get there before the first big snows. Toris had unenthusiastically volunteered to approach the Erzenai College to get space for a few people until the planned departure date after the southerner’s celebration of midwinter- after which the riverside towns should have cleared the Dienar of ice to make it passable for off-season reprovisioning runs- but Ludwig didn’t want him to have to reveal his presence in the south unless he really wanted to.

The afternoon didn’t make a very big dent in Feliciano’s ability to ride a horse, but at least he wasn’t sending mixed messages any longer. It was a good thing vanner cobs trained easily, and weren’t as prone to nerves as southern horses.

They were riding back to Naprah-Vraslau, and Ludwig had just about worked up the courage to quietly ask Toris about what the appropriate courtship method for Feliciano would be when Toris suddenly pulled up and dropped his reins, surrounding his hands in a blue-white, sparking glow.

Ludwig dropped back immediately to grab the side of Lisa’s halter, now noticing what the danger was. The woods around Naprah-Vraslau, and the clearing they’d had Feliciano practicing in, were airy and deciduous. _These_ woods were more like the familiar dense coniferous-and-undergrowth forest of the northern edge of the taiga, though there was oak and maple aplenty here.

Feliciano was shaking.

“Mage trap,” he whimpered, and Ludwig reached for his pistol. Everything went black before his hand reached the grip.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I've gotten some feedback that people are a bit confused. I asked and the answer I got was that the placement of countries was confusing- so this is me telling you that you don't need to know exactly where everything is in relation to everything else, so long as you know that Krasnivya is north of everything else. If you're interested, there's another note at the end where I'll try to clarify things, but so long as you know where people are at the current moment, that's fine.
> 
> In this chapter, Ludwig, Feliciano, and Toris have been kidnapped quite a ways away from the rest of the Entourage, which is still in Naprah-Vraslau.

Toris woke up in the cell cursing his inattention. He hadn’t been alert for magic, and they’d walked right into a Misstep trap. Who _knew_ how far away they’d been shifted- a trap small enough for three people could have taken them hundreds of miles away, with the right kind of power behind it. The woods he’d gotten a glimpse of had looked a lot like the woods of northern Uteyna.

And, he realized, as he took a proper look around the cell he, Ludwig, and Feliciano had been thrown into, this particular Misstep trap would almost _definitely_ have had that kind of power behind it. They were fickle traps, because if you set them at the wrong time, you could end up with anybody- and it hadn’t been there when they’d taken that path down to the clearing. Someone had set it up _specifically_ to get them.

Ludwig was still out, but Feliciano was awake, and cowering. He’d stuffed himself into the corner, and was looking at the bars with more terror than simple metal deserved.

It took another moment for Toris to even notice, because he was used to it- but the bars were iron, not tarnished bronze or brass. This was a _mage cell._

He took a slow breath and steadied himself. Before he’d gone to Krasnivya, this would have stopped him cold, but he could deal with this now. More worrying was the fact that they were in a mage cell in the first place, because _he’d_ thought that they were all gone. There had been a time, long ago, when the south had had a very small iron industry for purposes of binding mages, but it had fallen into disfavor as barbaric and inconvenient. Mage contracts were considered much superior.

So, either someone had gone through the trouble of digging up some iron and making new cells, or they were someplace that had been in ruins already when the mage cells had been destroyed.

Toris was inclined to think that this was a ruin. The stone of the rest of the cell was badly weathered with water erosion that wouldn’t have been allowed to happen if this had been a building in regular use, and with what little light there was and some squinting, he thought he could make out new patches where rock had crumbled between the iron bars, which were now re-hidden inside the wall.  

Nobody would have done this for Ludwig. The King of Neima was certainly upset at the Krasniviy for how Prince Ivan had spoken to him about Feliciano, but definitely not enough to go after the Krasniviy, or to try to get Feliciano back. They hadn’t made any other enemies in the time they’d been in the south.

So that left him.

Someone down here had been waiting for him to turn up again, and had a plan in place, and as soon as he’d been free with his name they’d heard and come after him-

If he focused on that, he _was_ going to panic.

“Has he woken up at all?” Toris asked Feliciano.

“N-no,” the other mage stammered, and Toris realized that a lot of the cowering was about taking up as little space as possible. Feliciano was trying to fit his entire body onto his coat, so he was in as little contact with the floor as possible. It was packed dirt, with flat iron bands sunk into it. “How can you _stand_ this?”

“Iron’s not as bad as you think,” Toris told him, and went to check Ludwig. He wasn’t really sure what had been done to him to knock him out, but if it had been magic, it would be wearing off soon, with this much iron around. He pulled one of Ludwig’s riding gloves off and touched his bare skin to the nearest iron band.

Ludwig shot awake, and Toris could relax, just a bit.

“We’ve been captured, sir,” he said. “I’m sorry, I wasn’t paying close enough attention. There was no reason for there to be mage traps on the roads around Naprah-Vraslau. The wars haven’t gotten there yet.”

“I don’t blame you,” Ludwig said, rubbing his face with the heel of a palm, and Toris gave him his other glove back. “If it wasn’t supposed to be there, that’s not your fault. No one is ever alert for ambushes in friendly territory.”

Well, Toris was pretty sure that it _was_ his fault, but this was another reason he liked working with Ludwig. The man might have followed the Krasniviy military around for five years, but at heart, he wasn’t a hardened military man. Toris had had his fill of those for a lifetime already, them _and_ their unforgiving, vicious ways.

“I’m pretty sure this is a trap meant for me,” Toris continued. “I’ve been using my full name in Naprah-Vraslau, and someone must have reported me. I wasn’t thinking about spies, and I should have been.”

“I don’t like the south,” Ludwig muttered, and Toris had to agree.

Feliciano made a little noise, and Ludwig’s head whipped around to look at him.

He really _was_ hopelessly sunny for the other man.

“Feliciano, do you have any idea how long we’ve been here?” Toris asked.

“I- they didn’t knock me out,” Feliciano said. Ludwig was starting to fuss, and giving him a visual inspection to see if he’d been hurt. Feliciano didn’t seem to notice that he was becoming less nervous under the scrutiny, and was actually edging ever so slightly out of his corner towards Ludwig and oh, for goodness’ sake! These two! “It was minute maybe from the forest to here and then two or three more down here and they left right away but that was a while ago I don’t _know_ -”

“So everyone _is_ awake,” someone said from outside the cell. _“Good.”_

It was said in that military tone Toris _hated,_ and before he turned around he saw Feliciano flinch violently, and Ludwig reach out to him.

Toris didn’t recognize the person, but he knew the uniform.

“And just how did a Tougnese captain get stranded in Uteyna?” he asked, making a guess about their location. The presumption and the drawl he’d put into the words might be enough to annoy the captain into saying something she shouldn’t.

The captain did glare, but apparently she was one of the people who got more silent when annoyed, not thoughtlessly talkative. Pity.

“What makes you think we’re stranded?” she asked, and matched his drawl with sneering scorn. “King François has had people keeping an ear out for your name for years, Toris Laurinaitis.”

“I had no idea he cared so much,” Toris said, gesturing at the cell like he wasn’t the least bit worried.

“The King of Tougnon has more important things to spend his time on,” the captain agreed. “But the _Mage-General_ doesn’t.”

He was _not_ going to give any indication that he’d just broken out in chills.

The captain must have noticed anyway, or guessed, because she leaned in just a bit. She was standing a good few feet from the iron bars, and twirling the iron key idly on one finger- the captain was wearing gloves, sure, but she must have been suppressing a _lot_ of twitchiness with iron that close to her skin.

“You’re a _deserter,_ Toris Laurinaitis,” she told him. “Lucky you, you’re too _valuable_ to be executed. The Mage-General will be here soon. I’m interested to see if it will be yours or the duke’s ransom he values higher.”

Toris almost missed an important point in that sentence, because his mind blanked out a moment in the white panic of _they’re going to bind me to a mage contract Sun no please-_

“The duke,” he said, mouth dry and berating himself a little for translating Ludwig’s Krasniviy title into something the southerners would understand more easily. “Is from Krasnivya. They don’t believe in ransom contracts. If the Mage-General tries that, there’s going to be trouble.”

“Krasnivya is no threat to Tougnon,” the captain said dismissively. “And if they _do_ want to make trouble- with you, we can destroy the Qiansungans marching on the capital, and then we can see how well such barbarians do against-”

 He shot forwards, flinging himself against the bars, an arm thrust through one of the gaps, reaching for her. The captain jerked back, expression momentarily terrified, but quickly covered it with bravado that didn’t totally manage not to have a nervous edge to it.

She smiled at the gap between his hand and herself. Toris was nowhere near being able to grab her.

“What?” she asked. “You thought that would _work?_ ”

The problem with iron was that it had a strong natural force of its own. There was no room for magic to work on it, or around it, not the way the southerners did things. They were always trying to force magic into it, or unknowingly working against the force it held, which was why it was held as fact that no magic could be worked around iron, and that any mage in contact with iron was powerless.

The Krasniviy, largely lacking magic and forced to rely on whatever could innovate or invent or use from the natural world, had actually sat down and studied the natural force of iron. That meant that the mages, once they’d gotten them, knew what the force _did,_ and could use the natural flow of it to orient the flow of _their_ magic, so the iron didn’t disrupt it-

Or, use the magic to _exacerbate_ the iron force.

The key the captain had been holding flew towards the cell bars and _clang_ ed against them. Toris grabbed it with the hand still next to his body, and before the captain could do more than stare in shock, tweaked the iron force just the right way.

Lightning crashed up and down the hallway, bright enough to force Toris to squeeze his eyes shut and turn his face away. Thunder roared in the confined space, loud enough to make his ears ring. Under it all was the smell of burnt flesh, hair, and cloth.

It ended, and he yanked his arm back, swiftly unlocking the cell door and pushing it open. His ears were still ringing too badly to hear, and likely Feliciano and Ludwig’s were as well, so he just trusted that they’d follow him, and ran down the hallway for the stairs, still holding the key.

There was no possible way that anyone else in the building had missed the lightning, and sure enough, at the top of the stairs was another Tougnese military mage. Toris didn’t use lightning here, but standard southern war magic. He was strong enough to force through the other mage’s protections, and kept going.

He plowed through another three mages in the next room, which looked like it was next to the exit out. The table they’d been occupied at was a spot of fortune- their confiscated weapons and the small saddlebags Toris and Ludwig had had with them to carry a bit of coin and food.

Toris spared the second it took to put his war knife back on and get his rifle on his back. Ludwig came up, towing Feliciano, and took his own knife, shoving the packs at Feliciano.

Then it was the door, and out-

It was _cold._ It was almost dark, and it was snowing, with a good covering of it on the ground already, and none of them were dressed for this. There hadn’t been snow in Naprah-Vraslau.

From outside, Toris could see that this was one of the very old ruins in the north of Uteyna, forts abandoned after the peace treaty with Neima that had ended the long, brutal war in defense of the old empire. Uteyna had lost, and leaving the forts had been part of the treaty. That had been over a century before the destruction of the mage cells.

The stables across the way were definitely new, though, and wood instead of stone.

“Go!” Toris told Ludwig, jerking his head towards the stable just in case his employer’s ears hadn’t cleared up the way his had.

Ludwig grabbed Feliciano and ran. More Tougnese mages came out of the fort, and around from the outside of it, and Toris started to back up towards the stables, drawing his war knife. He caught a few spells on the iron and some more with his own magic, waiting until he heard Ludwig’s yell of _“Toris!”_ from inside the stable.

 _“Get out here!”_ he yelled back, throwing the key at the advancing mages. He tweaked the force around his war knife a second later, and lightning flashed again, covering the open space between him and the fort, melting the snow and frying the mages. This time, not contained by stone walls, the thunder didn’t deafen him, so he could hear the stable doors open and the clop of hooves as Ludwig and Feliciano came with the horses, Ludwig on Sobaka and Feliciano leading Lisa, apparently not remembering that he was supposed to get _on_ the horse.

There was no one moving in the area, so Toris sheathed his knife and mounted Docinka.

“We’re definitely in Uteyna,” he told them. “Somewhere north. If we find a road, and a town, then I can figure out where exactly-”

The arrow passed close enough to him that he felt the displaced air on his cheek. It was meant for him, and missed by a hair’s-breadth; but that tiny inaccuracy resulted in something much worse.

It missed him, but sank crosswise through Ludwig’s neck. Ludwig reached up to feel it, looking vaguely surprised.

Old war reactions kicked in.

 _“Get up behind him, keep him from falling off!”_ Toris roared at Feliciano, who promptly forgot to be scared of horses and scrambled up behind Ludwig. Toris grabbed Sobaka’s reins and kicked Docinka into a gallop as the second arrow came, burying itself in the snow. It was swiftly followed by more, and Toris risked a short glance over his shoulder to see where they were coming from.

There were archers on the fort roof, where it had been repaired; and a couple more mages coming out from the fort itself. One of them raised their hands, and the snow directly behind Lisa erupted.

Toris leaned forward across Docinka’s neck as all three horses put on a new burst of speed, and tried to figure out what the fuck to do next.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Krasnivya is in the very far north, and lies mostly within the Arctic Circle of this world. It's southern border is a thick strip of taiga- a particular sort of forest. South of that, from west to east, is Neima, a large swath of land nobody really controls any longer, and then on the coast is the Fulgrad.
> 
> South of that is, again from east to west, Sceapbridge, Cheka Lake, Bochech (on the southeastern part of Cheka Lake) and Naprah-Vraslau (on the northeastern part of Cheka Lake), then Uteyna, Saiha, and Gazi Shehir, which occupies the area of land between the Dienar River in the north, which comes from Cheka Lake, and it's branch river the Unko in the south. Off the coast, roughly between the mouths of the Dienar and the Unko, are the Zaloti Islands, where the Entourage is going. 
> 
> Tougnon is south of Sceapbridge, Cheka Lake, and Bochech. Tien Ninh south of Uteyna and Saiha. Qiansung is south of about half of Gazi Shehir, and also curves around Tien Ninh to share a border with Tougnon. Qashgan is sandwiched between Tien Ninh, Gazi Shehir, and Qiansung. Lapsara owns coast south the Unko.
> 
> Was that helpful, or even more confusing?


	11. Chapter 11

_Lightning._

Toris had made _lightning._

That was the thing of miracle stories, legends- no mage could do _lightning,_ it had always been something a god did-

Lightning was the most-coveted of the magical arts, something that just about everybody tried to do once, just in case they were the exception. There were people who had spent their entire careers trying to make it work, but no one ever had.

But _Toris_ had. And he’d done it while pressed up against iron bars, and then _again_ holding a steel war knife.

There was no doubt that he was the greatest mage of the generation, but Feliciano was half-convinced that it was more than that, that Toris Laurinaitis was a god in disguise, or the child of a god-

_“Feliciano!”_

Toris was yelling at him, and Ludwig was a big man, heavy, the only reason he hadn’t fallen out of the saddle yet was because he was leaning backwards into Feliciano instead of listing to one side. His blood was trickling into Feliciano’s hair.

Feliciano looked over at him, too scared to speak. Even if that hadn’t been the case, the wind had picked up ferociously almost as soon as they’d started running, and he wasn’t sure Toris would have been able to hear him. Feliciano only knew what was being yelled at him because the wind was blowing towards him, bringing Toris’s words with it.

 _“If we stop!”_ Toris continued, now that he knew that Feliciano could hear him. _“Can you hide us?”_

Hide them? Feliciano didn’t know anything about snow, or forests-

_“Illusion!”_

Oh. _Oh._ Yes; yes he could do that.

He nodded, and Toris turned them off the road and into a clump of low-limbed pines, bring them around the trees so that they forced their way through on the opposite side of clump from the road.

Inside the pines felt warm. The branches blocked most of the wind and snow, and with all three horses with them, there was some body heat-

Toris dropped Sobaka’s reins and swung himself off Docinka.

“Help,” he ordered, holding his arms up.

It took Feliciano a moment to understand, and then he tipped Ludwig over. Toris caught him, but it took some minutes of work to get him the rest of the way off Sobaka.

Part of it was simply the difficulty of moving an unconscious person without dropping him, but part of it was because Feliciano couldn’t stop shaking, and he wasn’t seeing very well through the tears.

After too long, they’d gotten Ludwig on the ground, and Feliciano found himself off Sobaka, not really sure when or how that had happened.

Toris was tying the horses’ reins to the trees so they wouldn’t run away, and shot him a look.

Feliciano remembered the illusion, and set it without looking up from Ludwig. It felt like his eyes were locked there, on the blood turning his shirt red and the arrow shaft and at least the Tougnese wouldn’t be able to find them now anything within these trees was completely invisible and soundless if you were outside the trees and the clump itself would seem vaguely uninteresting, obviously too small to hide what they were looking for, no point in stopping here, surely they would have gone farther-

“You’re muttering to yourself,” Toris told him, kneeling next to Ludwig to look at his wounds.

He was? No, he wasn’t saying anything-

Feliciano realized that he’d been singing under his breath since he’d gotten on Sobaka, what _was_ he singing what was he trying to do-

“Docinka’s pack has flint and steel in it, get some twigs and start a fire,” Toris ordered, and then looked up when Feliciano didn’t move. “He’s not _dead,_ Feliciano- we’re going to need a fire to make water-”

He wasn’t dead.

_Ludwig wasn’t dead._

He should be dead, shouldn’t he, the arrow was right through his _neck_ Feliciano had seen people die from that; and then realized that what he’d been singing was a Sun hymn, a thanks for the healing and peace of the early summer’s warmth, that meant the end of the violent spring storms and the sickness the damp inevitably brought.

Feliciano dropped to his knees and grabbed the shaft of the arrow, hands suddenly steady and sure.

“What-” Toris started to say, and Feliciano broke the arrowhead off, then pulled the shaft out. Blood gushed as the pressure the wood had been making against the wound was removed.

“You _idiot!_ ” Toris snapped, and tried to push him away. “You’re going to _kill him-_ ”

Feliciano rocked back into position from Toris’s shove, clamped his hands over Ludwig’s neck, and started to sing properly.


	12. Chapter 12

Toris had been about three seconds away from _murdering_ Feliciano for removing that arrow, but then the words of the hymn registered. It wasn’t familiar to him, and after a few lines he could tell it was because it was specifically about the circumstances of the Zaloti Islands. Krasnivya’s important sun wasn’t the summer.

He forced himself to take a mental step back, and really _look_ at what was happening.

Feliciano had his hands pressed over the entrance and exit wounds of the arrow. His eyes were mostly closed, and he was swaying back and forth slightly, in time with the song.

This was a mage doing healing magic. Feliciano was going to be completely oblivious to everything else until the wound was healed, he passed out, or Ludwig died.

Or if Toris snapped him out of it, but Feliciano was the only reason Ludwig was alive right now, and had any chance of _staying_ that way.

Toris had a moment of panic- if Feliciano was so focused on the healing magic then _what about the illusion-_ but once he stepped out of the trees to check that it was still in place, he completely forgot about why he was staring at a bunch of trees instead of hiding.

He’d actually wandered a minute or two further into the forest before he remembered that he _had_ been hiding, and that he was actively walking away from the people he was supposed to be guarding.

Toris shook his head, hard, to clear it and walked back through the trees. Feliciano could multitask like _that,_ and make an illusion so strong that he’d completely forgotten what he was doing; and the south had thought he was _worthless._

The idiocy of these people, _really._ He could come up with at least five very good military applications for Feliciano just off the top of his head. Even with the way that Feliciano had said he hated war, and didn’t want to fight, the man should have been drowning in offers for employment, simply on the basis of his power. So King François had started a trend of not hiring court mages, the _Colleges_ should have been vying to get him on staff. Maybe he could teach how he didn’t and maybe he couldn’t-

But Feliciano sang while he worked, and it wasn’t the calming techniques he’d known some other mages to use. He sang, and the words had something to do with what he was doing. That sounded like bard work, and if _that_ was true, then Feliciano Vargas of Zaloto was the _only_ trained bard in the entire world. That should have been more than enough for a College job, so that he could have time and resources to preserve his knowledge.

Though- maybe Feliciano wasn’t a trained bard.

Toris knew that Prince Ivan had made at least one comment about Feliciano being a spirit-child, and some of the others in the delegation had teased Ludwig with the same, because of the way he’d been struck by Feliciano’s singing at court.

He wouldn’t have given it any credence, but for how this illusion had been. Any other mage he’d heard of, or met, or worked with, would have simply masked the sight and sound of them. But this extra layer of- befuddlement? confusion? sorcery?- was exactly the sort of thing that the refuge spirits of the taiga would do to make people walk in circles, or not realize they were starving to death, or end up driving intruders mad.

Feliciano was in the exact same spot that Toris had left him. Toris wasn’t sure if it was truth, or wishful thinking, but Ludwig looked just a bit better than he had a few minutes ago.

The maybe-bard, maybe-spirit-child, had hidden them without any apparent effort, as well. Toris remembered the easy way Feliciano had kept up his illusion under the mage slavings, and wondered what sort of luck the Krasniviy had earned to pick Feliciano up as he dug out his flint and steel and lit a fire.

He spent some long hours in the dark with that fire, not getting any warmer but reasonably certain that he wasn’t getting any _colder,_ at least, listening to the sounds of the Tougnese looking for them on the road and in the woods. It was more difficult than it could have been, because the wind was still blowing fiercely out of the northwest, masking much of the noise.

At some point, he fell asleep.

It was false dawn when he jerked awake again, consumed by an instant of terror at the memory of _cold!_

If you fell asleep cold, in the snow, in Krasnivya, you didn’t wake up again; and it had almost happened to Toris before. The fire had gone out sometime in the night, and Toris was freezing. He scrambled out of the snow that had accumulated around him to check on Feliciano and Ludwig.

Feliciano was still singing, quieter now. It was rather dark but Toris was almost certain that Ludwig was looking more alive than he had the evening before. At the least, he was breathing normally, and _that_ shouldn’t be the case if he had a gaping arrow wound through his neck, shouldn’t it?  

Toris wished they had blankets, but he was going to have to settle for rebuilding the fire.

He was halfway standing when the _crack_ of a rifle echoed through the forest. Toris froze, and realized that the wind had died while he was asleep. He could hear the forest again- and that gunshot had sounded very close.

Which didn’t make any sense. He’d been _sure_ they were in Uteyna- no, they had to be, he knew what old Uteynan style forts looked like and the captain he’d killed hadn’t contradicted him when he’d said they were in Uteyna.

But they’d gotten all their guns back. There shouldn’t be anyone around here with a rifle.

Unless- maybe the Entourage had found a mage to figure out where they’d gone-

There was another _crack,_ and that was definitely close. It was immediately followed by the familiar scream of someone who’d been shot, and then a third _crack._

A sudden scuffle broke out, even closer by, and Toris had just gotten his war knife drawn when two grappling figures crashed through the pines and started tussling on the ground. Toris caught flashes of a Tougnese uniform, and another long blonde hair, and-

It couldn’t be-

Feliks pinned the Tougnese mage to the ground and drove his knife through the man’s mouth. The mage went limp, dead, and Feliks leaned on his knife for a moment, breathing heavily, before drawing it free, standing, looking around-

“You’re totally not dead!” he burst out, and dropped his knife to tackle-hug Toris, kissing him soundly before pulling away to continue talking. “I was like, half sure you weren’t, I was getting _twitchy_ like when you locked yourself in the icehouse and Eduard was totally not down with all the pacing I was doing and got all snappy so I took the month’s purse for the taxman and decided to ride down to the taiga line to pick up the Foresters’ too, ‘cause, you know, good neighbors and junk but then I got there and I was talking to the Forester and then the taiga _screamed_ Toris it was the most terrifying thing I’ve ever heard and a bunch of refuge spirits turned up and they said that Ludwig was _seriously dying_ and I don’t even know _why,_ I swear by the Sun, but I got up on Pretty and I got the Forester to give me a couple of rescue packs and then I started riding and it was like, really windy, like blizzard windy? And then I was in this _other_ forest and there were southerners everywhere and-”

“Wait,” Toris interrupted him. “You _rode_ the _wind?_ ”

“What?” Feliks asked. “No, I rode Pretty.”

“No,” Toris said. “The wind- it was- it was a northwestern wind!”

That was the direction of Ludwig’s estates, now that he was thinking about it.

“The refuge spirits- they brought you here?”

“Uh, no?” Feliks said. “Like, I thought I was. I was following the singing. But, I mean, I dunno. _Is_ this the taiga, shouldn’t you be a bunch more south?”

It _couldn’t_ be.

Toris gently removed Feliks’ arms.

“Feliks,” he said. “What the singing about?”

“See, that’s the _totally weird_ part,” Feliks told him. “It was in Zaloti? And you know the refuge spirits are, they don’t really like, _sing_ in a certain language? It’s just kinda- there. But it was Zaloti, it was about the summer sun.”

He got a funny expression on his face.

“Wait, does that mean that this _is,_ like, super far south?”

“We’re in northern Uteyna,” Toris said. “That’s very far south of where you started. You shouldn’t have gotten here for- a while. Weeks. But the song, was it like-”

He titled his head towards Feliciano, and Feliks finally noticed them.

 _“No way,”_ he said. “Yeah, that’s the- _holy shit Ludwig!_ ”

And he’d noticed the blood, and the broken arrow.

Feliks was over by them in a flash, flitting frantically around them.

“Hey! Hey!” he said loudly, poking Feliciano. Toris was about to tell him to leave the mage alone when Feliciano’s eyes fluttered open. He blinked dazedly a few times, and then started to fall sideways. Feliks caught him, and Toris rushed over to check Ludwig.

His neck looked completely healed.

“Sunlight,” he muttered quietly, relieved; and then louder: “Ludwig? Sir?”

He stirred, and woke, brow furrowing in confusion.

“Toris?” he asked muzzily, and reached for his throat.

“You’re not dead!” Feliks exclaimed, and Ludwig sat up, still holding his throat, and peered at him.

 _“Feliks?”_ he asked, and then noticed who he was holding up. “Feliciano!”

Feliciano locked eyes with him, gave him a happy, vacant smile, and passed out.

That- well, that probably needed to happen, Feliciano had been at it all night, but it almost certainly meant the illusion was gone now.

“You said you had rescue packs,” Toris said to Feliks.

“Yeah,” Feliks replied, and then realized: “ _Toris,_ you’re not wearing a coat! You’re freezing!”

“We don’t have any coats,” Ludwig told him, and took Feliciano from him as Feliks jumped up to get the rescue packs, gently cradling the mage in his arms.

Proper Krasniviy coats were a divine blessing at this point, and Toris was extremely glad to have them.

“We have to leave,” he said, once they’d gotten coats on everyone. “Feliciano was holding the hiding illusion up, and it’ll be down now. We need to get out of here before any of the Tougnese mages come through again.”

He could tell that Feliks really wanted an explanation for all this, but there wasn’t time just now. They spent a minute discussing whether Feliciano could be safely tied to Lisa or not, but Feliks put his foot down and said that while the vanner cobs he bred were very good, they weren’t good enough to keep an unconscious rider safely in the saddle, even tied down, if they galloped or bolted. They put Feliciano up behind Ludwig on Sobaka for a second time, and tied his arms around Ludwig’s waist so he could have his hands free to shoot, if the Tougnese caught up with them. The packs went on Lisa, and then they ventured out, alert and as quiet as they could be, onto the road.


	13. Chapter 13

The three of them had gotten into the small forest-edge village in time for a slightly-late dinner, and none of them had been planning on continuing for the night.

“It’s just,” the mayor told them nervously, as they ate in his dining room. “There’s strangers around. Strange mages, all dressed the same. Foreigners. We’re pretty sure they’re hanging around the fort ruins in the woods.”

Natalya had sighed, shared a tired look with Cezar and Geir, and told the mayor they’d look into it as soon as they were done with dinner.

Strange mages in what might be uniform was a very worrying development. They were probably Neiman, and if the Neiman were moving in again, then either they were preparing to attack the Fulgrad, or they were resurrecting the centuries-finished war against Uteyna.

They were an official searching party from Erzenai College, and they couldn’t allow that to happen.

“It’s so damned _cold,_ ” Cezar grumbled, pulling his scarf up higher on his face.

“Not as bad as it could be,” Geir told him. “I still remember living up north near the Black Woods. It was colder than this in the winter there.”

Natalya saw Cezar shudder with a combination of cold and dread, and smiled a little to herself. She was from near the Black Woods herself, and the dark and the snow was making her a little nostalgic. She’d been embroiled around the new Tien Ninh borders with Tougnon and Qiansung for too long. She was glad the Erzenai College had decided to buy her and Cezar’s contracts back from the Tougnese army. Going out to look for young mages in need of training was a much nicer job than killing people.

And- if she was going to be honest with herself- if she’d stayed in the war for much longer, she almost certainly would have turned into a monster by now. She’d seen it happen to other war mages, and she’d felt it happening to herself. Even now, she was still too quick to go to knives when she wanted something.

She sighed as they rode through the dark woods. Things had been better, once- and she knew exactly when they’d changed. It had been right after Tougnon had captured Arshalva, destroying the Duchy of Vagalbs. Some Galbsi hold-outs had made a post-last-stand just outside the city. Somehow, they’d gotten Qiansungan help, and the Tougnese had been temporarily routed.

Toris had disappeared in that fight, and the war had gotten a lot more vicious after that.

Or maybe it wasn’t more vicious, it had just seemed that way, since she and Cezar had been missing their best friend.

Geir was a nice boy, and she didn’t even mind- any longer- that he was with them because he was the younger brother of the Dean of the College. He had a knack for finding people.

But he wasn’t Toris.

They’d been riding in the woods for a while when an unexpected boom of thunder jolted them out of their comfortable silence.

“It’s not raining?” Cezar said, puzzled. “Doesn’t it only thunder when it rains?”

“Sometimes it thunders in a snowstorm,” Natalya told him- but it was only snowing a bit. These weren’t the right conditions for lightning.

It worried her up until they heard some kind of commotion ahead of them, and slowed. It moved away, or dispersed, as they continued forward; and by the time they reached the ruined fort the villagers had told them about, it seemed to have gone completely.

But there were arrows in the snow, and new wooden stables. This wasn’t a very abandoned fort. Natalya got off her horse to pull up an arrow.

The fletching was dyed blue, and bound with yellow thread. The bronze arrowhead was engraved with a familiar symbol.

“Cezar!” she called. “This is a _Tougnese_ arrow!”

“Natalya,” was the answer, in a flat tone she hadn’t heard since they’d left the armies.

Cezar and Geir were looking down at something in the snow. Natalya came over, and saw that they’d brushed the snow off a corpse, dressed in a scorched Tougnese mage uniform. There were other, similar-sized lumps under the snow, undoubtedly more bodies.

“Were they set on fire?” Natalya asked. “She hadn’t seen anyone dead like this before.”

“No,” Geir said. “I’ve seen people caught in fires before. They don’t look like this.”

They went into the fort, and found more dead Tougnese mages, these with the familiar marks of war magic on them. There were a few dead in the room just inside the door, and another at the top of a set of stairs beyond that.

But at the bottom of the stairs-

Natalya had gone down first, and hissed as soon as she got to the bottom, backing up the steps again and just missing a collision with Cezar and Geir.

 _“Iron!”_ she told them, gripping the obviously-new stair rail tightly. “There are _mage cells_ down there!”

After a couple minutes of steeling themselves, they went into the cell hallway as a group, trying to stay as far away from any iron as possible. There was one open cell, and a Tougnese mage captain, dead with the same strange burning as the mage they’d uncovered from the snow outside.

Cezar was looking at the open cell with a sort of horrified air about him.

“You don’t think,” he said slowly. “There was thunder earlier.”

It took her a moment to understand what he was getting at.

“No!” she said. “It can’t be! Nobody can _make_ lightning!”

“Why else would you dig up mage cells, though?” Geir asked. “Wouldn’t a mage who could make lightning be the only thing worth it? These Tougnese aren’t anywhere near their army, so they have to be here for those cells.”

“Well,” Cezar muttered. He was starting to edge back towards the stairs as his nerves frayed. “Whoever they wanted in here, for whatever reason- it didn’t work.”

They elected to stay in the fort for the rest of the night, Natalya and Cezar trading watch shifts. It was the only way to stay out of the howling wind that had blown up suddenly, and if there were other Tougnese around, they’d likely turn up here eventually.

And they’d be answering some questions, whether they liked it or not.

Just a little before dawn, Natalya woke Cezar and Geir, and reported some strange noises from the woods a bit earlier.

“It wasn’t thunder,” she said. “But that’s the only thing I can think of that it was like. It was quieter, and didn’t rumble. It was- like if thunder was lightning.”

That wasn’t a great explanation, and she could see that the other two didn’t get it, but it was the best she had.

They got back on their horses. There was a small road leading from the fort through the forest. It wasn’t the way they’d come in, but it was the logical route to take if you were trying to leave the fort, especially in a hurry.

Geir gravitated towards the front of the group as they rode.

“Feeling something?” Cezar asked. It would be a strange place to discover a young mage, but it wouldn’t be the weirdest finding a search party had ever had.

“Something,” Geir agreed. “I don’t know…”

He closed his eyes and waved a hand around in an arc around him a couple of times.

“That way,” he said after a minute, pointing at a group of trees further down the road.

The pines were thick, and they dismounted to push through them. It was worth it, because they found evidence of a fight. There was another dead Tougnese mage, and a lot of signs of horses, and a large patch of blood near the middle of the small area the pines encircled.

“I guess they found whoever they were looking for,” Geir said.

“Got away,” Cezar observed. “That’s a lot of blood, though. Even with a horse, can’t be far.”

“Definitely not far,” Natalya said. She’d knelt down by the dead mage to check the blood- it was still mostly wet. “Come on.”

They’d been on the road a couple minutes more when she heard the strange lightning-thunder sound again.

“That was it!” she told them, and nudged her horse faster. “That was the sound from this morning!”

It came again, and again; and many times after, in an uneven rhythm. Sometimes there were two close together, or even on top of each other, and other times there seemed to be a deliberate, measured distance between _crack_ s.

The road turned ahead of them, and the latest _crack_ was _very_ loud. On unspoken consensus, they slowed down and took the corner cautiously.

Around the bend, the forest opened up into a small clearing. Natalya’s attention was immediately drawn to the Tougnese mages in their bright uniforms- many of them were lying in the snow, bleeding, likely dead already. The ones still upright or ahorse were throwing spells, though there was one archer remaining.

As she watched, one of the _crack_ s came again, and blood fountained from the archer’s head. She collapsed in the snow, dead.

What sort of spell could do _that?_

“Natalya!” Cezar hissed, next to her. “It’s _him!_ ”

For a moment, she thought that Cezar meant the Mage-General of Tougnon, because she’d just spotted him on his big brown horse. He’d just dropped his reins and kicked his horse to the front of the Tougnese, which was why she’d noticed him.

But then she looked over to the other side of the clearing, where the _crack_ s had been coming from, and-

 _“Toris,”_ she whispered, as her old friend drew a long, silvery knife from a sheath at his side. It was the length of a short sword, and looked silver, but she doubted it could be. That much silver in that shape would be excessively expensive, heavy, and just generally pointless. If you needed a silver knife, you had one that was only a few inches long, at most.

He pointed the long knife at the Mage-General, like he was about to challenge single combat-

And lightning erupted across the clearing.

Natalya blinked her eyes clear, and saw that every Tougnese mage in the clearing was down, dead, with the burns from the fort on them.

 _“Gods,”_ she heard Geir whisper, the sound strangled.

It was- _lightning,_ gods, yes- but more importantly, it was _her friend._

 _“Toris!”_ she called, choosing to be joyful in this moment, and not scared. “Toris!”


	14. Chapter 14

Ludwig wasn’t totally sure who he’d been shooting at for these past few minutes, beyond the fact that it was in self-defense because _they_ were shooting at _him._

He’d taken a perverse sort of pleasure in carefully aiming his horse pistols and taking head shots at the archers. These guns weren’t as powerful or accurate as the rifle Toris carried, but standing still at this distance, they worked perfectly fine for his purposes.

After the lightning faded, he reholstered the pistols in his saddle, and took a deep breath to relax. The one mage on the horse had had a fancier uniform than any of the others they’d seen, and given the size of the escort he’d had when they’d run right into him on the road, this had probably been the man in charge.

They were safe now-

 _“Toris!”_ someone called, and a woman he’d never seen rode out of the woods. “Toris!”

Ludwig looked at his bodyguard to see if this was a threat or not. Toris didn’t seemed worried at all- his expression was of dumbstruck surprise.

_“Natalya?”_

They both started talking very quickly, with evident enjoyment, and what sounded like a lot of running over each other’s sentences. Ludwig could pick out the odd word he recognized as Uteynan as he paid half-attention to Toris and Natalya. The other half was divided between keeping an eye on the two men this Natalya had brought with her, one of whom jumped right into the conversation with some incredulous exclamation; and Feliks, who’d dismounted and was rounding up the enemy’s horses that hadn’t been killed or run off.

Toris could handle himself around friendly people, Ludwig decided, and rode over to Feliks. He had his hands lightly cupping the face of a horse that was a nice shiny brown, and was softly crooning “ _good_ girl, _good_ girl” at it. The horse was snuffling into his chest, and kept trying to move its head back to lip at his hands.

“Suborning the horses works even when they don’t know Krasniviy?” Ludwig asked him.

“It’s not about the words, it’s about the tone!” Feliks told him, and scratched the horse under its bridle. “Oh, you _like_ that, _don’t_ you, _good_ girl. As long as you’re like, confident and calm, and friendly, they’ll hear that, every time!”

“And you had treats, of course.”

 _“Totally,”_ Feliks agreed, and tapped the horse gently on its nose. “No, no more fruit-bits for _you,_ silly good girl.”

He whistled for his horse, Pretty, and the gelding trotted up obediently. Feliks gave him a couple of small cuts of the dried fruit he kept as incentive, and introduced the two.

“Are we going to be able to _keep_ additional horses?” Ludwig asked.

“Lisa’s free,” Feliks said. “And he follows Sobaka, and Sobaka and Docinka are friends, and Docinka and Pretty stable together, and they’re all part of the same herd. These poor babies have just lost all their friends and nice humans, and they’re still scared because of the shooting, but _our_ horses are calm and trust us and have their family around. That’s like, the _best_ thing for scared horses. I’ll tie the good girl here to the back of Lisa’s saddle, and the rest of them will follow along.”

“I was thinking more about feeding them,” Ludwig said. The only way they could keep horses in Krasnivya was heated stables and the giant greenhouses. It wasn’t a great environment for keeping animals in, but they needed labor animals. This was the south, sure, but there was also snow everywhere. Logically, there was some way for herbivores to make it through without human assistance, but it wasn’t like _he_ knew what those were.

“There’ll be, like, farmers and stuff,” Feliks told him. “Towns. Cities. There are _totally_ humans around who’d buy a horse cheap. We don’t have a profit to make, just expenses to pay. And there’s a bunch of money in horses. I bet these are like, _cavalry_ horses too, and Toris or Natalya or Cezar can tell us where to sell those.”

Ludwig glanced back at the people Toris was still talking too.

“You know who they are?”

“Toris tells stories,” Feliks said. This was news to Ludwig- he knew facts about the man, but the only story he’d ever heard him tell was the summary version of how he’d come to Krasnivya. He’d thought Toris didn’t want to talk about the south, so he hadn’t pressed. “You know how he was in one of the armies? Natalya and Cezar were at Erzenai College with him, and they all went to the army together as a unit.”

Ludwig had an alarming thought.

“They won’t take us _back_ to their army, will they? That would be bad for diplomacy. The Entourage is doing its best to stay absolutely and clearly neutral.”

“I don’t like, _know_ a bunch of stuff about the south and the armies and that,” Feliks said. “But I know that Toris ran away from the Tougnese army? He told me what the uniforms looked like, and I’m pretty sure _these_ assholes-”

He pointed at all the dead mages.

“-were Tougnese. So since Natalya and Cezar totally aren’t trying to like, arrest us and stuff, and aren’t in uniform, I don’t think they’re with the army any longer.”

“Yes, but they could be with a _different_ army now,” Ludwig pointed out, thinking of what he’d learned of mage contracts and the turnover rates of war mages’ employers.

Feliks just shrugged, unconcerned, and called Lisa over so he could tie the _‘good girl’_ to the other horse’s saddle.

A few moments later, Ludwig heard Toris say his name and turned Sobaka around to face his guard. By the time the turn had completed, he’d realized that Toris was simply naming them for his mage friends, and hadn’t wanted his attention.

Well, Ludwig wanted _his._

“Toris.”

The mage glanced over at him, then excused himself from his friends to come over.

“Sir?”

“Feliks told me these were _army_ friends of yours,” he told Toris.

“ _College_ friends,” Toris said. “It’s an important difference, we’re like family. Extended family, usually, but I know Natalya and Cezar personally. And Geir is the younger brother of the new Dean.”

“So they’re here as mages of your college?”

“They’re a searching party- that’s mages sent out in small groups to find new mages. Erzenai does a lot of them, even though the country’s small, because- well, it’s a story, I can tell you later. But they weren’t expecting to find much of anyone, and then there was this town nearby, who’d noticed the Tougnese hanging around, so they came out to look.”

His change of expression indicated that something funny had occurred to him.

“And they sort of _did_ find a new mage, I guess.”

Ludwig raised a questioning eyebrow.

“Feliciano, sir,” Toris said. “Though he’s not really _new._ He’s had training. But as far as I know he’s not part of a College, so he counts as new enough.”

In spite of himself, Ludwig sighed.

“Toris,” he asked. “Is this going to get _political?_ ”

“The fourth-most-powerful person in Krasnivya got kidnapped out of a diplomatic mission by a Tougnese Captain carrying out the express orders of the Tougnese Mage-General, who could be argued to be acting with his king’s authority. The rest of it is only a matter of degree, depending on how much of getting you was on purpose or an accident or-”

“I know it’s already a politically-charged situation, Toris,” Ludwig cut him off. “But I want to know if it’s going to get _political._ ”

“I’ll have to ask. Just a moment.”

Toris conferred with his friends, and came back.

“Tougnon isn’t at war with Uteyna, but they’re not allies either. There’s _no reason_ for the Tougnese to have chosen to kidnap me- us- this far north, but for those mage cells, but even then they could have dismantled them and shipped them back to Tougnese territory. Natalya and the others haven’t killed any Tougnese mages, that was all us. All of this falls back on Tougnon, and they’re only likely to get a strongly-worded letter, since they didn’t really interfere with Uteyna. And depending on how the Dean feels, they might find it _very hard_ to get willing Erzenai mages in their army. I think it will all be fine. But.”

_“But?”_

“What were you planning on doing from here?”

Ludwig hadn’t particularly thought about that.

“Get back to the Entourage,” he said, fully aware that was much more of a goal than a plan.

“The Entourage is supposed to go to Erzenai from Naprah-Vraslau,” Toris reminded him. “It will probably look like _‘politics’_ to you, and people could try to make a deal out of it, but they’ll look petty, because the Colleges’ rules are older and trump here. I’m of Erzenai College, I’m entitled to their hospitality and accommodations- me and a reasonable number of my guests. Feliks and me- the south may not consider us a legal relationship, but Erzenai has an understanding, it’s not even like we’ll need separate rooms. And I’m working for you, and we’re friendly. Plus, we’re clearly coming separate from the Entourage, which is another point in our favor to keep it from getting _‘political’_. Anyway, I wanted to bring Feliciano to Erzenai, or another College that was available. _He_ doesn’t know it, and I’m not sure anyone else has really picked up on it, but he _deserves_ a place at a College, for what he knows and what he can do. And being biased in the matter, I’d like Erzenai to get him.”

“I own his contract,” Ludwig said, feeling uneasy about putting it into words. It was _wrong._

“Erzenai has enough money to buy it off you,” Toris told him. “ _More_ than enough. And at a proper price, too, not that 1,000 pounds silver pure bullshit the Neimans stuck him with because everybody else had been too stupid to realize what they’d got.”

Toris was Krasniviy, but he was an adult refugee, Ludwig reminded himself. He probably still didn’t really see anything wrong- or anything _much_ wrong- with remedying Feliciano’s situation by getting him a higher price on his contract.

But he still wasn’t going to like it.

And he might- subtly discourage it from happening. He was conflicted about it, because what if Feliciano _wanted_ a place at the College? But he didn’t feel like he could, in good conscious, hand Feliciano off to someone he didn’t know, who might exploit him later.

 _If you **don’t** get someone else to take his contract, _a voice in him whispered. _Feliciano will have to go back to Krasnivya with you. He won’t be able to stay somewhere he knows, and he’ll probably be unhappy about it, **but** you’ll get to keep him. Are you sure you don’t have ulterior motives? _

Ludwig might have been conflicted and not totally sure about his own moral position, but he did agree to go to Erzenai. Housing and accommodation they didn’t have to pay for was nothing to pass up, especially since it seemed so stuck in accepted tradition. If the College offered to buy Feliciano’s contract, well, he’d deal with it then.


	15. Chapter 15

Toris hadn’t ridden this tired in years, since before he’d gone to Krasnivya. In a way, he even _liked_ it- he wasn’t tired because it was a forced march in the army, or because he was fleeing anywhere. He was with friends, both old and new; and, in a way, he was going home.

Oh, Krasnivya was home, nowadays, and he wanted to go back. He wouldn’t be safe in the south, and he’d gone more than a little native in the north. But Uteyna was where he’d been born, and lived most of his life, and Erzenai was his College. He was more excited about going back than he’d thought.

He hadn’t been this excited when the Entourage had discussed it. Toris thought about it as they rode for the large trading town Natalya and Cezar and Geir remembered was down the road, and decided that it was because, when the Entourage had been talking about changing course to Erzenai, he’d still been deciding whether he wanted to formally announce his presence to the College or not. Now, because of using his full name a few times as a test run in Naprah-Vraslau, the decision had been made for him, so the only thing left to do was enjoy the presence of the people he’d grown up with.

Toris was keeping an eye on Feliks and Ludwig. Under normal circumstances, he wouldn’t- they’d both done long-distance rides, and sometimes done them tired- but Feliks was also having to manage a number of loose horses, and Ludwig had just about _died._

Cezar cleared his throat, and Toris wondered what his old friend would ask. The conversation in the clearing had gone, roughly and with more words:

_“We thought you were dead!”_

_“I’m not dead!”_

_“Where the hell have you been!”_

_“Krasnivya!”_

_“KRASNIVYA! You **asshole** we thought you were dead!”_

_“I just wanted to be away from the wars!”_

_“We thought you were dead and you come back with **lightning?** ”_

_“Secrets, sorry, and this is Feliks, Ludwig, and Feliciano, do you know how to get out of here?”_

It hadn’t been very _informative,_ was the point, but now they’d gotten back on the road and had a destination, so there were plenty of things they could talk about.

“So these are your new Krasniviy friends?” Cezar asked.

“Feliciano isn’t Krasniviy,” Toris told them. “The Entourage- the diplomatic procession- well, Ludwig- the Duke- oh, let me start over.”

He took a breath, using the moment it gave him to arrange his thoughts.

“Feliks is the one who found me once I’d gotten into Krasnivya. I was mostly frozen to death, and he brought me back to the manor he worked at, which was Ludwig’s. Feliks and I are- as soon as I got a look at him, it was a soul-bond, right away.”

“That doesn’t hap-” Natalya started to say, then shook her head, and muttered _“Lightning.”_

“It _does_ happen anymore,” Toris said. “So I wanted to stay there and Krasnivya doesn’t have many mages, so Ludwig hired me, and I was one of the top people in Ludwig’s district guard, with Raivis- he’s with the Entourage still, which is Winter Prince Ivan’s diplomatic procession, which is also on pilgrimage to Zaloti, because it turns out that just about everybody in Krasnivya is a Zealot.”

The southerners assimilated this information.

“How did that even _happen?_ ” Cezar asked. “Them being Zealots. I thought nobody traded up there, because of all the rocks on the coastline.”

“I’m told the waters aren’t that bad,” Toris said. “If you know them. Most traders only come to exploit emergency food shortages, so they don’t know where not to go. But they get refugees- immigrants, pretty regularly, so I bet that’s how the Zealots got a foothold. It makes sense that that would end up the majority, anyway, they’ve got something like nine months of constant sunlight up there.”

“You mean like, no clouds, right?”

“No- no night, for nine months. If you weren’t born to it, it takes a lot of adjusting to.”

He was pretty sure his friends wanted to call him a liar for it, but they knew each other well enough to know that he wasn’t lying.

“Sun-worship makes sense, then,” Geir Sorensson said diplomatically. “You mentioned a manor? You’ve found employment with the local nobility, then?”

Oh, _this_ was going to be a conversation.

“The Winter King is in charge of Krasnivya,” Toris started to explain. “They rule for fifteen years, with part of their duty being training the Court Magnates, and then the Winter Prince becomes the Winter King. The Winter King’s chief advisor, minister, and general second-in-command is the Court Magnate of the First Degree, the similar position to the Prince is filled by the Court Magnate of the Second Degree, and the one being trained to come up the ranks is the Court Magnate of the Third Degree. The King before the one we have now, Yao, was King Surinder, who took Ludwig up when he was an orphan child of no known background in Red Palace Town to begin training as Third Court Magnate. He was eight or so, about the average age for this, and his training went through all fifteen years of King Surinder’s reign. The first five years of King Yao’s reign, he spent shadowing Prince Ivan, who was the Winter General then, to assess him for fitness. Last year, Ivan was appointed Prince, and so Ludwig was promoted to Second Court Magnate. The new Third Magnate is a girl named Liesl, who will take Ludwig’s place in ten years when Ivan becomes Winter King, and Ludwig First Court Magnate. When Prince Ivan’s term as Winter King is up, Ludwig gets the same retirement options as he does- lands, trade, vocation, provincial government, or the judiciary.”

“They run their country like a _College?”_ Geir asked incredulously.

“So he’s not actually noble at all,” Cezar said.

“Legally?” Toris asked. “Sort of. He has a lot of authority and power, and he owns a _lot_ of land, and he has some perks of the position, but there’s nothing like the long lists of enshrined rights and privileges you can find in the countries down here. If you’re asking just by bloodline, then you’re absolutely right, he’s not. I’m not sure _anyone_ in Krasnivya is, unless it’s through bastardy somewhere- nobility doesn’t tend to run north. They get killed, or they get ransomed, or they go to extended family, or they just accept the new rule as borders change. King Surinder was a Lapsain Sergeant. Thirty years ago King Yao was tending his family’s orchards in Qiansung. Liesl’s family is four generations removed from the Fulgrad- they were a fisher-family, and thought to make some extra money by running goods up to Krasnivya. They liked it so much that they stayed, and they’re still in contact with the other branch of the family in Fulgrad. Both sides have made boatloads of money from the local little import business they have, so Liesl’s probably the closest thing the Krasniviy government has to nobility. Sometimes you get people like Roderich Edelstein, he’s with the Entourage as the Winter Diplomat, who were solidly middle-class, of respectable families from wherever they came from, but that’s not very common.”

The others were silent for a while as they thought about this.

“It occurs to me,” Natalya said carefully. “That in ten years, Prince Ivan will have only ten years of experience in government, while your, uh-”

“Employer?” Toris suggested, ending her fumble for Ludwig’s proper title of address.

“-your employer- will have had _twenty-five._ ”

There was a question there she was too polite to ask.

“Yes, the Court Magnates often have much more experience than their King or Prince,” Toris said. “The Krasniviy think it’s better that way. The person in charge has lived a previous adult life in something completely outside government, and has a particular perspective from the side of the people; while the person who has to implement their orders, and get things done, has been immersed in the workings of government since childhood. Yet, they’ve also been taught by _‘the side of the people’_ , so they understand the differences in viewpoint, balance them, and ensure the best working relationship and outcome for the country.”

“That sounds-” Natalya started to say, and Toris was pretty sure the reason she didn’t finish was because she was trying to come up with something better than _‘wrong’_.

“It works, I promise,” Toris said. “It’s a very stable system. It wouldn’t work here, but that’s because the Krasniviy are status-conscious in a different way. Nobody is _born_ to authority and power, but once someone’s got it, it’s considered that they’ve earned a healthy level of obedience and respect, which means a certain amount of arguing and airing of opinions. It can be revoked, but more often, when someone _really_ messes up, that’s just a reason for people to start forming task committees and begin treating whoever’s in charge as _‘first among equals’_ until everyone’s satisfied that they’ve learned how not to mess up like that again.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Cezar said.

“That’s because you haven’t lived it,” Toris told him. “In all the time that Krasnivya has existed, that there have been people living up there? They’ve never had a rebellion, never had a coup, never had a succession crisis- not _once._ I won’t say they haven’t had puppet Kings, but that’s only because no one can really be _sure-_ and anyway, I’m pretty sure the native Krasniviy would just treat it like a very, very long-term task committee, or exceptional management on the part of the First Magnate. They wouldn’t see anything wrong with it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, I was honestly expecting to be done with this story by now. I thought it was going to be another short-chaptered thing I cranked out quickly, like with _The Joyous One_ , but I guess not. Figures- I start two stories I think are going to get done quickly, this one and the ATLA crossover, and the ATLA crossover chapters are short but take _forever_ to write and the chapters for this are short and fast but there's a lot more of them than I expected.
> 
> And then the latest _Grace Will Lead Us Home_ chapters are dragging along slowly, writing-wise, and I can't figure out why.


	16. Chapter 16

Feliciano woke up, again, somewhere he didn’t recognize.

That is, he recognized the general _shape_ of it- a private room in an inn, nowhere he’d ever had money to stay but places he’d cleaned before- but not anything particular about it that would tell him where he actually was.

He was under the bedsheets, which was a welcome first.

“Awake, Master?” someone asked quietly, and he looked towards the sound. There was a maid seated on a stool by the door, with a basketful of sewing work. She quickly folded up what she’d been working on and stowed it in the basket. “I’ll just go tell the Duke, Master.”

She slipped out of the room, leaving Feliciano to very quickly piece together what little information she’d implied- _‘Master’ I’ve never used that title for myself and I haven’t got anything on me that says ‘mage’ so someone who’d know how to fudge my rank for treatment that’s Toris ‘Duke’ there’s only one person he’d be with who gets that-_

Ludwig opened the door, the movement just too controlled for it to be said that he burst into the room, but it was a near thing. His expression was a bit wild, but Feliciano flashed onto the fact that Ludwig _wasn’t dead,_ and without actually thinking about it he was out of bed and reaching up for the man’s neck and face, exclaiming “You’re not dead!”

The duke had gone very, very red and Feliciano flinched back on instinct- why hadn’t he been _thinking,_ you didn’t _touch_ nobility-

“I- Your Highness I-”                                            

“I’m not _‘Your Highness’_ ,” the duke said automatically, and looked at him- he hadn’t been before, that wasn’t like the Krasniviy, Feliciano had noticed they paid attention to their servants- and then quickly looked away again, an expression something like mild panic on his face. He practically dove for the chest with the saddlebags on top, and Feliciano saw that the inn had done laundry for them, because his clothes-

“Oh,” Feliciano said.

Ludwig picked up the long red coat, dropped it so fast that Feliciano was half-convinced that he’d actually _thrown_ it to the floor, and grabbed Feliciano’s shirt and pants. He tugged them off the chest so sharply that his saddlebags fell off, too.

 _“Here,”_ Ludwig said, shoving the clothes at him. He was looking very fixedly at the bed, and not Feliciano.

Feliciano took his clothes back, and Ludwig dropped to knees to put his things back in his saddlebags. He’d gotten his pants on when he heard Ludwig make a little frustrated noise.

He looked over as he sat down on the bed to put his socks on. Ludwig was scowling at a thick packet of parchment.

“Mage ransoms follow you, sir,” Feliciano told him. “It doesn’t matter if you didn’t pack it.”

“I’m not _‘sir’,_ either,” Ludwig grumbled, reaching for the contract.

“Toris calls you _‘sir’-_ ” Feliciano started to point out, but Ludwig’s yelp of surprise cut him off. The duke had picked up the contract, and it had _burst into flames._

The burning paper started falling towards the carpet, but the fire burned itself out within seconds, leaving only fine ash to fall to the wool.

But that-

Their eyes met.

“It wasn’t supposed to do that, right?” Ludwig asked; and Feliciano _remembered-_

“I, in the woods,” Feliciano told him, voice shaky. “I, you were _dying,_ and- I healed you you would have died, that’s-”

“Oh,” Ludwig said, sounding oddly relieved. “Yes, Toris told me. Saving the holder of your contract is grounds to void it. That’s-”

He seemed to realize that Feliciano may have gotten his pants on, but he’d only managed one sock and hadn’t gotten to his shirt yet. The duke went red again.

“Toris went to get lunch by the time you’re done it should have arrived we’ll see you there,” he said, and left the room in a rush.

They were probably expecting him for lunch as soon as possible, but Feliciano was halfway through getting his shirt on when the temporary darkness of having the thick cloth over his head tripped some sort of subconscious _‘dark’=’safe’_ association, and he burst into tears. Arms trapped in shirt wasn’t a comfortable position, so he finished getting his shirt on, but then sat there and just cried for a couple minutes.

He’d thought he’d be stuck with that ransom for his entire life, but now it was _gone._ All it had cost was an hour of panic and some unknown amount of time doing healing magic, and now he could be his own person again-

It was a relief, and he was going to sing thanksgiving hymns when he had enough privacy for it to be unobtrusive; but somewhere in the middle of divesting himself of the emotional baggage of sudden freedom, Feliciano realized something downright terrifying.

He still had no employment options. Duke Ludwig had bought his contract because he felt sorry for him, but now that that was gone, would he be allowed to stay? It wasn’t like the Krasniviy seemed like they needed any more help, and Toris definitely had them covered in the magic department. Was he going to have to odd-job his way home, and then _still_ have no job, and go back to busking in the streets, because that was no way to make a living and where maybe _once_ he could have lived with a bit of sex for dinner and a night inside and maybe breakfast afterwards, Feliciano was _very_ sure that he’d never be able to do that now, not with the memory of the King of Neima’s housekeeper _ordering_ him like that.

So it would be busking, and then begging-

Feliciano forced himself to stop crying, put his boots on, and picked the red coat of the Duke’s service livery up off the floor. If he just acted like he was still with the household, maybe they wouldn’t throw him out.

And if the Duke _did_ dismiss him- there was lunch downstairs, and he could get that first. As much as he could eat, and sneak away anything small that would keep.

He went down to lunch, where there was dried fruit with the meat and soup and bread. Ludwig had been having a strained, frantic conversation with Toris in Krasniviy that stopped suddenly when he got close enough to the corner of the inn’s main room that they’d been given.

There was someone strange at the table- a blonde man, slight.

“So you’re Feliciano, huh?” he asked. His Zaloti had the Krasniviy accent Feliciano had gotten used to hearing. “That’s _quite_ a coat.”

“It is pretty bright,” Feliciano replied, feeling like he was missing something. The man’s smile was just too knowing, and the duke looked like he wanted to hide under the table. “But it was the only color there was. Raivis and Lady Erzsébet helped get it for me.”

The new man snorted, made some sort of teasing comment in Krasniviy that contained Erzsébet’s name, and elbowed Ludwig with a big smile.

“Feliciano, this is Feliks Lukasiewicz,” Ludwig said very quickly, pushing Feliks away. “He came to rescue us from Krasnivya- magic, Toris knows what it was. He and Toris are married.”

Feliciano was too caught on what sort of magic would have let someone come from Krasnivya to- Uteyna? He was pretty sure the people he’d passed had been speaking Uteynan- because the only thing he knew of that could do that was stories, like lightning, to notice the next sentence for a couple moments.

Then his head shot around to Toris. The war mage looked carefully distant.

“It’s allowed in Krasnivya,” he said. “They don’t think anything of it.”

If they allowed _that,_ then what else-

He realized that were all looking at him.

“Okay,” he said.

“ _‘Okay’_?” Toris asked.

“My older brother,” Feliciano told him. “He’s got a man. It’s been a long time since I was home, but- he’ll still be there. They can’t- but he’s family.”

There was relaxing of tension around the table, and Toris indicated the empty spot next to him, by the wall. He and Feliks fell into conversation in Krasniviy over their lunch, leaving Feliciano to hoard food in peace.

“You know if you get hungry later, you can just ask at the kitchens,” Ludwig said, and Feliciano jumped. He’d thought that the duke had been paying attention to his own food, and Toris and Feliks’ conversation. “We’re not leaving anytime soon. Some of Toris’s friends showed up, and we’re going back to Erzenai with them, but they had to stop back at the village who told them about the mages at the fort to tell them that everything was taken care of.”

Feliciano hadn’t thought to ask about the Tougnese.

“Are they- dead?”

Ludwig nodded.

“Toris got most of them,” he said. “Feliks and I took care of the rest. We sold one of the Tougnese horses here when Toris’s friends remembered that there was a large enough town down the road, so we have the money for more food.”

That wasn’t the point, but Feliciano put the food he’d been trying to hide back, since Ludwig had seen him. He could ask for food that traveled in the kitchen later, and only feel a little guilty about sort-of stealing Ludwig’s money.

The duke took a deep breath, and Feliciano braced himself.

“You know,” Ludwig said, tone careful. “You don’t have a contract any longer. You don’t have to work for me.”

That was about what Feliciano had been expecting.

“Are you dismissing me, sir?” he asked, because some things required formality.

“I’m not _‘sir’_ ,” Ludwig said. “I know you pointed out that Toris calls me that, but that’s because I can’t break him from military habits-”

By his sudden change in expression, his brain had caught up past the automatic response to hearing _‘sir’_.

“Wait- what, no!” he exclaimed, flustered. “Why would you- yes, the contract is gone, but you don’t _have_ to-”

Toris cleared his throat pointedly, and Ludwig’s gaze flashed over at him. Feliciano looked too, and saw that Toris was giving the duke a significant look. Feliks nudged him, lighter than the elbowing he’d given him earlier.

Ludwig wilted just a bit, and then suggested that they continue the conversation back in the room. Feliciano followed him upstairs, wondering what Toris and Feliks had been about.

The duke shut the door behind them, and started fidgeting.

“I,” he said, and didn’t seem able to make eye contact. He kept looking somewhere else. “The thing is. I still don’t know how this works in the south, and it would have been very wrong of me to say anything while you were still bound by that contract, because there are _responsibilities_ and _boundaries,_ but you don’t _have_ to work for me any longer, and we’re direct about this in Krasnivya, mostly, and- oh, nightbedamned, and also no matter what you say, about either thing, you’re welcome to stay with the Entourage as long as you like, I should tell you that-”

“Um,” Feliciano said, and bit back the _‘sir’_ that he wanted to say. “You just did.”

“Right, yes- I- well- Feliciano Vargas, I think you’re quite, uh, very pretty, you seem like a nice person, not that we’ve had much conversation, more would be nice, but not if you don’t want to, and, well, I’d like to get to know you better, socially, I mean, romantically, that is, if you’d also like, and given the position and the situation I give my word here in the Sun’s light that refusal brings no repercussions.”

It said something about Ludwig, Feliciano thought, the only part of that he hadn’t stumbled over was the sort-of official part at the end.

“ _‘Repercussions’_?” Feliciano asked. “ _‘Responsibilities and boundaries’_?”

“You were- are- Should an employer find themselves attracted to one in their employ, the same rules apply as to teacher and student, or officer to enlisted, and others in position of power,” Ludwig told him. “It is completely out of bounds for the employer, or someone elsewise in power over another, to make advances beyond friendship or mentorship to the employee, or one who is otherwise in a subordinate positon. It is technically within allowance for the subordinate to make advances to their superordinate, but to engage even with permission is seen as improper. Therefore, as our relative positions are somewhat unclear, given as I took you as part of my household under extenuating circumstances, because of the ransom contract, that are now removed, your further employment is open for negotiation, and is assured, should you want it; though it must be refused should you wish a, er, reciprocal romantic relationship.”

That sounded like an awful lot of cultural baggage to Feliciano, and besides that-

A _noble_ wanted to have a relationship with _him._ Ludwig _liked him,_ and it wasn’t just the illusion.

 _And Krasnivya allows this,_ some part of Feliciano said. _If he likes you that much, maybe he’ll ask you to marry him, and then you won’t have to worry about money again; and your family would be his family, so they’d be safe too._

It was an outside chance, and it felt uncomfortably mercenary to Feliciano, but it was a possibility and he’d be a fool to ignore it.

Anyway, Ludwig was… nice, in the way he acted and, being totally truthful, how he looked. He was polite; and he was principled- he had strong morals and kept to them. Really, all the Krasniviy seemed to be, but the duke acted like he took it more seriously than the others, as evidenced by the little speech he’d just given, and what Toris had told him about how the Krasniviy had felt about learning of ransom contracts, and how he’d gotten Toris to send him out through the refugee camp in Neima to invite the refugees to Krasnivya. And he’d let Feliciano out of his mage bindings. He hadn’t had to do that. He _owed_ Ludwig, even if the ransom was paid.

Even beyond all that, Feliciano trusted him. It sort of made him want to run away, _really fast_ and very far away, but- Ludwig was nervous enough that he probably really wanted this, and he owed him, and Ludwig wouldn’t push for sex, he’d had the perfect chance and he hadn’t, and this was the best and safest deal he could think of. 

If it didn’t work out, it didn’t work out.

Feliciano mustered a smile.

“I’d like to try,” he said, and focused on how bright and happy Ludwig’s answering smile was instead of the creeping feeling of guilt in his gut.


	17. Chapter 17

Ludwig felt like bursting with happiness, but that would be embarrassing.

_Feliciano liked him too!_

“You’re going to need new clothes,” he said instead. “You’re not working for me, you shouldn’t be stuck wearing livery.”

He had money enough from the horse, and Toris had said something about being able to access the money he’d left behind now that he was back in Uteyna, so they wouldn’t have to worry about money. Anyway, there were more horses to sell.

Ludwig did go to Toris and ask to borrow his coat for Feliciano, though, because _thank the Sun_ that awful, alluring red coat Raivis and Erzsébet had gotten him was part of the livery, so he wouldn’t have to _see_ Feliciano in it again, no matter how much he _no he did **not** like it, it was **not-** it just **was not!**_

He was _not_ having thoughts about _that coat!_

Feliks got bouncy when he was happy, and went a fair ways to making the table shake when he and Toris inferred the reason behind Feliciano needing Toris’s coat because he was getting different clothes.

“See, it wasn’t that hard, was it?” Toris asked him.

It _had_ been that hard, but Ludwig knew Toris wasn’t going to believe him, so he didn’t say anything. His bodyguard then borrowed his husband’s livery coat to play manservant, so he could be on hand to deal with the language, translate, and tell Ludwig about fashions. The rest of them needed changes of clothes, too, after all.

The town with the inn was decently large by Uteynan standards, according to Toris, so there were some clothing shops to choose from.

Feliciano immediately went for the cheapest one- well, not _the_ cheapest one, because there was a thirdhand shop hiding further towards the edge of town, but it was still clearly on the lower rungs of quality. Decent, and the best you were going to get, if you didn’t really have money to spare and needed to look like you had at least a _little_ disposable income.

Ludwig stopped Feliciano with a hand on his shoulder.

“You’re no one’s servant,” he told him quietly, and steered him towards one of the more upmarket shops. It wasn’t the nicest one on the street, because he didn’t have _quite_ that sort of money at the moment-

Ludwig was suddenly seized by the intense desire to _have_ that sort of money, and more, and have it _now;_ because Feliciano deserved the _very best._

He breathed through the sudden attack of feeling, and told himself that it _would_ happen. For now, Feliciano just needed to be out of livery, and look as high-class as they could manage.

The store Toris discreetly pointed out to him was good enough to have pre-made clothes on display, clearly the product of the store workshop, as well as clear provisions for bespoke options. To satisfy social conventions, which Ludwig wanted dearly to ignore, the most expensive item was going to be a bespoke shirt for him, in the nicest material the store shop had on hand. Toris bullied him into getting measured, and then engaged the store employees in discussion over materials and prices, leaving Ludwig free to look around with Feliciano.

As Toris had explained, the fashion for younger sons of the minor nobility, which was apparently an acceptable rank for a discreet _‘friend’_ of high nobility, was an undershirt with large sleeves, a sleeveless knee-length sort of overshirt or vest, in nicer cloth, and a particular sort of neckband called a cravat.

“Absolutely _never_ to be mistaken for jabots, which are a Tougnese invention, and much longer and wider and pleated, worn loose,” Toris had told him before they’d walked in. “That’s still the style for major nobility and the parents and older brothers of the, ah, dangerously sartorial risqué younger sons. The cravat is unadorned cloth, often colored, worn slightly puffed up by securing the end of the cloth inside the top of a low-buttoned doublet or jerkin. The cravat started in Uteyna and Naprah-Vraslau, and is copied from the neckscarves of the Zaloti crews on the riverboats, and is so attractively rebellious against the Tougnese stranglehold on high society standards.”

It was _very good_ that Ludwig had Toris, and he was absolutely getting a large bonus when they got home.

To _really_ complete the outfit, there were funny knee-length not-really pants that Toris had called _‘breeches’_ , and dress boots; but Ludwig wasn’t about to replace good Krasniviy boots and pants with southern fashion that didn’t look like they’d hold heat. It was _winter,_ there was _snow_ on the ground, no matter that it was still quite warm by Krasniviy standards, not even ten degrees below freezing, and the snow was picturesquely light and fluffy.

He’d have to settle for getting Feliciano another southern coat, though. At least it wouldn’t be red. There was a decent dark-colored one, and Ludwig added it to the pile Feliciano was rather reluctantly making. He’d picked out two undershirts, in a light gray and a sort of dun that would be easy to keep clean, so long as anything that would stain was taken care of quickly. Ascots, too- in white, dun that was more pale yellow, and an acceptable shade of dark red. The current problem was the long overshirt thing- the jerkin? Ludwig was pretty sure the doublet was the form-fitting one, but he could have been wrong about that.

“The one with gold on top and midnight blue on the bottom,” Toris said from behind them. “It goes with both shirts and the white and red ascots. And then _that-_ ”

He was pointing to a premade doublet tucked on a stuffed form near the back of the shop. It was markedly different from the others in form and material- the lines were slimmed down, and it seemed made to be worn with ascot, with the low-buttoning collar. The material was highly patterned, ordered black and mint designs on a rich green.

“I was talking to the shop people,” Toris said. “And one of the lower-ranked apprentice tailors decided to be _ambitious_ and sewed that. Thought he could sell it to some of those younger sons I was talking about, except this isn’t a fashion center, and it’s a little _too_ forward-thinking for around here. The shopmaster considered it a ruin of perfectly good, if lower-rung, Qiansung brocade, but wanted to make _some_ sort of money out of it. It’s going cheap, it’s a little foreign, and some exotic won’t hurt the two of you, sir. _You’re_ already staying as close to the Krasniviy look as possible, and Feliciano’s going to have some of that, but people are also going to recognize him as Zaloti. You could get away with a lot, if he seemed a little stranger, to go with you. It’s the allure of something new and unexpected, a little mystique, and it could cover for a lot.”

Ludwig saw the way Feliciano was looking at it.

“Buy it,” he told Toris, in Krasniviy. “And, if won’t drive the price up too much, ask if the apprentice tailor can do another one, in whatever brocade we can afford, so long as it matches the other things he has.”

Toris nodded, swept a large feathered hat off a display to add to Feliciano’s clothes, and went to pay and do final bargaining. He returned to say that the shop was willing to do a rush job, for just a bit more money, and he’d decided it was worth the price. The items would be done after dinner, and the shop would send a runner over to the inn.

Ludwig didn’t see Feliciano tug on Toris’s sleeve as they went back to the inn and whisper a question in his ear, so he was _very_ surprised the next day, when the Erzenai mages arrived in time for a late breakfast, for Feliciano to turn up in the green brocade with the white ascot and the hat and an assortment of copper jewelry, looking like the cutting edge of southern fashion with the clothes and a particular confidence, just a bit of swagger, in the way he carried himself that Ludwig was pretty sure he was just imitating from the young men he’d seen at the Neima court and this was better- worse- _agh_ this was like _that coat all over again,_ but even _more,_ he didn’t even have the proper cultural context for this, _why._

The Erzenai mages sounded very impressed by Feliciano’s looks, now that he wasn’t passed out on a saddle behind Ludwig after hours of magical exertion.

Feliks leaned over the table to quietly tell him that the jewelry had been Feliciano’s idea- it was his, he’d asked Toris about it because he’d brought some from Zaloti, a certain amount of jewelry on men was apparently accepted there and anyway jewelry was portable money, so Feliciano had started to keep it with him on the road once he’d gotten used to the Entourage, _just in case,_ and by luck had had it with him in Lisa’s bags, with his portion of the food they’d brought, when the Tougnese had kidnapped them out of Naprah-Vraslau. Toris had agreed that the jewelry could add to the exotic touch.

Ludwig wasn’t sure if he wanted to give his bodyguard a heartfelt _‘thank you’_ or sucker-punch him for helping with Feliciano’s new look.


	18. Chapter 18

Feliciano had never thought he could feel pretty without a dress, but oddly-done fancy doublet thing-

He’d seen brocade fabric before, when he’d gone busking around the mainland coast. Ladies with a bit of money would use it as the front panel of a bodice. Ladies with more money would use them as skirt panels. Their husbands, if they _really_ had money, would have brocade cloak linings. Once, he’d seen a palanquin with brocade curtains.

Royals apparently used it sometimes as upholstery, but even at the Neiman court he’d never seen brocade used as the basic fabric for an item of clothing, excepting the presentation robes of the Qiansung ambassadors.

But _this-_

They were back on the road, with Toris’s friends from Neima- Natalya Arlovsk, Cezar Dalca, he’d _heard_ of them, he’d gotten on okay with Toris, but those three were the terrors of the battlefield and he’d ride over _here,_ thanks- and were a couple hours out from Erzenai. Most days, Feliciano had been wearing the less-striking jerkin, and some days he hadn’t cared at all, and just worn his new coat buttoned up over his undershirt the whole day.

But the two or three days he’d worn the brocade, either the green from the shop or the gray that had been delivered with Ludwig’s replacement shirt for the one he’d gotten blood all over, Ludwig hadn’t been able to stop _staring_ at him.

It was- Feliciano wasn’t totally sure how he felt about it, because the last time had been in Neima, but he thought it was mostly a _good_ feeling. And other people looked at him on the road, and at the inns they stopped at, and the other mages introduced him as _Master_ Feliciano Vargas- and they’d _know,_ right, and what was the point of lying now that they were in friendly territory, if they were saying that then maybe- and yes, it was _good._

At first, he’d faked the self-confidence and the swagger of minor nobility and younger sons, but now he was preening all on his own.  

People were paying attention to him. They were looking at him like he was important. They spoke to him with just a bit of deference and respect.

He was being treated like he _mattered._

 _It won’t last,_ a part of him kept insisting. _It won’t last, you’ll get home and you’ll be a nobody again._

 _Then I’ll enjoy it while I have it,_ he snapped at the voice, and it shut up.

Good.

Feliciano doffed his hat at some ladies at the shops as they entered one of the Erzenai’s large satellite towns for lunch, flashing them a showman’s charming smile. They smiled back, whispering comments to each other. A bold one waved hello.

Toris split off from the group as they went to get lunch at a coaching inn that habitually served mages. Uteynan lunches were typically large affairs, and they got a private room, since there were so many of them.

The food had come when Toris arrived, with a bag slung over his shoulder. He shrugged it off and reached in.

“Feliciano,” he said, and tossed a coin purse at him. Feliciano caught it, and opened it.

Copper bits and half-weights, bronze quarters and the odd double, which was enough for two week’s rent in Zaloto- and _that_ was living poor, not next-to-destitute like he’d grown up.  

It seemed heavy for what he was looking at, and it felt like there were larger coins at the bottom. Feliciano rooted around until the light glinted off what was hidden under the common coins.

 _Silver._ Half-weights, maybe ten; and a _gold_ weight, tucked right at the bottom.

This was the second-largest amount of money he’d ever held in his life. Master Herakles’s bequest had been larger, but basically all of it had been immediately spent on Cristoforo and Carlino.

“I-”

“You told me you were using your jewelry as money,” Toris cut him off. “You’ve kept it shined up, so it looks nice, but it’s not worth much. I thought you could use some financial padding.”

He really could use this.

_“Thank you.”_

Toris shrugged.

“I had the money,” he said, and pulled out a larger purse- more like a small bag- and set it down on the table next to Ludwig’s food.

The duke eyed it warily.

“I don’t need money,” he said.

“Do so,” Toris retorted. “You spent all your silver, remember?”

“We have the horses,” Ludwig pointed out. “And Feliks ran off with the district’s tax money. _And_ the Foresters’. We can use it if we have to, and when we get home I can pay it back-”

 _“Sir,”_ Toris said, sounding exasperated. “It’s a gift. For taking me in and giving me a job, and yes I _know_ that’s just what Krasnivya does, but I’m thanking you for it anyway.”

Ludwig didn’t look convinced, but opened the bag anyway.

Then he swore, very quietly. There wasn’t any copper or bronze in _this_ bag, just silver and gold- Feliciano could spot quarters, half-weights, fulls, and doubles.

“Yes, I _know_ I could buy myself my own estate in Krasnivya for that,” Toris said, before the duke could make a protest about the money. “But I’m _rich,_ sir, war mages get paid _very_ well, I just panicked when I ran north and left basically all of my money here, so it’s been making interest too. I’ve got some vague memories about thinking that emptying my account would look really suspicious, and make me easier to track, or something. Once the Entourage moves on from Erzenai, I’ll close my account and bring it all with me- but I _assure_ you, I haven’t put myself in the least bit of financial difficulty by giving you this.”

Cezar was looking between the duke and Toris with marked interest, able to follow the conversation because the group had fallen into using Zaloti as their default language. It was the only one they all understood, though they weren’t all equally fluent in it.

“What sort of exchange rate do you get on gold weight in Krasnivya?” he asked.

“Huge,” Toris told him, and plunked a smaller purse down on top of the silver and gold. “ _Yes,_ sir, this too! You can’t go around spending gold and silver weights everywhere, even in the south. That’s too much for most things, but you can take bronze weights to markets and inns, and buy off the street carts with copper.”

 “Toris,” Natalya said. “This inn has a yard around back.”

“Good,” Toris said, and Natalya and Cezar and Geir stood up. “Feliciano, come on. I want you to show them what you can do before we get to Erzenai.”

Feliciano was gripped by terror. Show what _he_ could do to _these_ people?

“It’s really not-” he tried to say.

“It is,” Toris said. “Ludwig and Feliks can put the money with the horses? I want them to see, too. There’s something I want their opinion on.”

It didn’t seem like he had a choice. He stood up from the table and followed the other mages out to the coaching inn’s back yard. A large area had been staked out with bronze rods.

“For mages to practice,” Toris told him. “Usually it’s students on day trips or overnights with College chaperones, to do fieldwork, but sometimes mages will meet and swap techniques and ideas. In you go.”

Feliciano dithered in the middle of the yard, the others forming a square around him.

“What- what do you want me to do?” he asked, once Ludwig and Feliks had arrived with the horses, money safely hidden in the saddlebags and packs. They didn’t enter the staked-out practice yard.

“Someone trained you,” Natalya said. “Who?”

“There was a mage who had a falling-out with his college, he came to Zaloto to get away from it, he heard me singing- um, Master Herakles Karpousi-”

“ _That’s_ what he told you?” Cezar asked.

“He was running from a ransom contract, Feliciano,” Toris told him. “And that- explains a lot. What did he teach you? Everything, please.”

Feliciano explained about the court magics, and the lessons in singing and storytelling and performing, because he hadn’t wanted to give up entertaining.

“A _bard!_ ” he heard Geir Sorensson breathe, awed, when he brought that up, and wanted to protest that it wasn’t _really_ true, no one knew how to train a bard any longer and just because he’d had uncommon training didn’t mean it was anything _special._

“You were singing when you healed Ludwig,” Toris said. “Even before we stopped in the woods to hide.”

“Things work better when I sing,” Feliciano told them. “I can’t-”

This was humiliating to admit.

“I can’t _do_ most magic,” he said miserably. “If I’m not singing, I can heal really little things, or call some light, or make a decent shield. When I’m singing, it’s better, I can heal like with Ludwig, but that’s the biggest thing I’ve ever done and I wouldn’t have tried it if I wasn’t so scared. Usually I just do headaches, and making people have happier moods. I can call wind, I can make fires and blinding flashes and break spells, sometimes. But I can’t do war magic. I can’t do infrastructure things. I’m just really good at making things pretty and nice and pleasant and nobody will pay me for that.”

“You weren’t singing when you made the illusion,” Toris said. “Well, you _were,_ but that was clearly for the healing.”

“I don’t have to sing for illusions,” Feliciano said. “I never have, they just happen. Once Master Herakles heard me singing on the street and realized that I didn’t _know_ I was enhancing it with magic, and told me that I could do magic, they just…”

“How old were you?” Cezar asked.

“Ten.”

“You didn’t know for _that_ long?” he exclaimed. “We do searching parties all the time- we’re taking in three- and four-year-olds! _Five_ is late! You never did anything on accident when you were little, and played at doing magic?”

“Children play at doing magic?”

Feliciano couldn’t think of anyone who’d done anything like _that_ from home.

“They don’t do that in the Zaloto Islands?” Cezar asked.

“Maybe other children do,” Feliciano answered. “Ones that have money. We didn’t. Don’t. My mother-”

He didn’t want to admit this either, but these were _war mages,_ good ones. They could probably tell he was lying just by _looking_ at him. He’d heard stories.

“She _was_ a sailor,” he said, and tried to cling that scrap of respectability, even as he couldn’t bring himself to look at anyone. It was bad enough that the mages were here, but so was Ludwig-

_You’re not good enough for him, he’s a duke, he’s friends with a prince, he owns land, he’s rich enough to buy a ransom; you’re street trash, a whore’s son, the gods just thought it would be a laugh to give you magic and make you no good at anything people would pay for, you’ve got nice things now but that’s luck and nobility that likes your looks._

“But she got pregnant with my eldest sister at sea and she said a sea-spirit did it and she- she never got better from that delusion and no one would hire her and- begging didn’t make enough for six children. We told each other stories, and sang songs, things other people knew and ones we made up, because that didn’t cost anything and you could do something with your hands while you did it and if it was a fun song or a really good story, you could ignore being hungry or tired for a little bit.”

 He didn’t dare look up from the ground, they were probably looking at him like-

“I wouldn’t judge so fast,” Toris said. “Can you do the illusion that hid us from the Tougnese? I think everyone should see that.”

Feliciano didn’t even have to dredge up the memories of terror- he was plenty mortified right now.

_Don’t see me don’t hear me ignore me I’m not here I’m not here go somewhere else I’m not worth your time you know I’m not_

“Toris?” Natalya asked, sounding very puzzled. “What are we doing out here? I know we’ll get to Erzenai before dark, but that doesn’t mean we should just stand around.”

And it wasn’t _working-!_

“I thought you said you couldn’t tell us how you did the lightning.”

Feliciano looked up at that, because if Toris was making lightning again he wanted to get out of the way.

But he wasn’t. Toris was just standing there with his eyes closed, a look of concentration on his face.

“Toris?” Natalya asked.

“You know why we’re here,” Toris told her, tone oddly flat and even.

“No, I _don’t._ Why did we come out here?”

“You’re watching a demonstration.”

Cezar looked around the yard.

“There’s nothing here!”

Wait, so the illusion _was_ working?

Ludwig had a really _weird_ look on his face. So did Feliks.

“Might we get back on the road?” Geir suggested, and they were just going to _leave him?_

Just because he’d made himself invisible didn’t mean he didn’t _exist_ any longer!

It was one thing for people not to pay any attention to him as he walked by, or studiously ignore him in the streets because they didn’t want to give him an opening to heckle them for money. It was something _completely different_ to be totally ignored by people he’d been around for the last few days, who’d been called out here _specifically_ because Toris had wanted him to demonstrate his magic, who’d asked him a bunch of personal questions and were surrounding him and this was the magic he was actually _good_ at and **_how dare they-_**

Anger surged, and suddenly Feliciano had the odd feeling of commanding absolute, total attention; of being the focal point of everything in the vicinity.

“That was- _new,_ ” Toris said, eyes open now. “Definitely didn’t happen last time, _interesting._ ”

Natalya was going _‘shitshitshitshitshit’_ under her breath, hands blindly flexing like she wanted to snatch something, even as she stared wide-eyed at him.  

Now uncertain and self-conscious, the feeling fizzled away from Feliciano. Natalya turned her back to him, taking deep, heavy breaths.

“What was _that?_ ” Cezar asked, voice faint.

“Toris?” Feliciano asked.

“They’re scared, Feliciano,” Toris told him, and- _these_ war mages, _scared?_ By _him?_ “That’s a really strong illusion, and you put something else in it. Once the illusion goes up, anyone on the outside forgets that you’re there. I stepped outside of the illusion in the forest to make sure it was working, and then spent two minutes looking for a hiding spot before I remembered that I _had_ one already. I was prepared this time- it doesn’t affect you so much if you close your eyes- but it was still hard to work through. And then when you dropped the illusion- I think you just inverted it. We _couldn’t_ look away. Even though we tried.”

He couldn’t be _that_ good. But there was no reason to lie about it, and Natalya and Cezar _did_ look pretty shaken.

“They’re scared because they know you could kill them,” Toris continued. “If you tightened the radius of effect to just yourself, then it wouldn’t even matter if you ran into someone. They’d forget as soon as they weren’t touching you any longer. This is the dream power for an assassin, or even just a scout. And that second thing, with the attraction- be more subtle about it and you could walk up to some camp sentries, start talking to them, and then walk an entire strike force past them. They wouldn’t be able to do a thing about it. There’s _no one_ in the wars who’s as good as you, not at this.”

“That’s like, interesting,” Feliks cut in. “But I dunno, it didn’t feel like that to me.”

“I didn’t forget,” Ludwig told Toris, and then looked at Feliciano.

“I knew you were still there,” he told him. “I couldn’t _see_ you, but I knew where you were. But I kept having thoughts that said you weren’t important and that weren’t worth my time and that I should go somewhere else, do something else. But that didn’t make any _sense,_ that’s _completely_ wrong!”

“You- you think I’m important?” Feliciano asked hesitantly, feeling strange stirrings of hope.

“Of _course!_ ” Ludwig exclaimed, and then went quite red for no apparent reason.

“What did it feel like to you, Feliks?” Toris asked.

Feliks shrugged.

“It was familiar?” he said. “Same as Ludwig, really. But less-”

He grinned, and waggled his fingers. Feliciano had no idea what that was supposed to mean, but apparently Toris did, because he sighed a bit.

“Mind telling everyone how you got to us from Krasnivya again?”

“Sure. I was feeling antsy, and now I know it was because you were in trouble, so I went out to turn the taxes in and I was down by the taiga when Ludwig got shot, and then the refuge spirits turned up and I started riding, following the singing. I _thought_ it was theirs, but it was-”

He stopped, and blinked at Feliciano.

 _“Oooooooooooh,”_ he said. “ _That’s_ what you wanted the opinion on, huh, Toris?”

“What?” Geir asked.

“There’s this thing in Krasnivya called _‘spirit-born’_ ,” Toris said. “They happen sometimes, if refuge spirits and humans get involved. Usually it’s among the Foresters, or the people who live right on the border of the taiga, but it can happen anywhere. A human and a spirit just have to hit it off. You almost always get a kid out of it, and, well-”

“They’ve got your skill set,” Feliks told Feliciano. “Illusions and the magical singing. You said you can like, make people feel happier? If you’re- if a Krasniviy- is out in the taiga when they’re singing, it feels like home. Bet you could do scaring people out of their wits, too. Mucking with people’s sense of time and direction they have _totally_ no idea where they are or how long it’s been since they started.”

“So you think _I’m-_ ” Feliciano said.

“It explains why Ludwig and Feliks weren’t as affected as much,” Toris added. “And maybe why I could resist it with concentration, or distance. Ludwig and Feliks are born Krasniviy, and I’m accepted. The refuge spirits _protect_ us. Feliks followed _your_ singing, riding the wind out of Krasnivya. There’s really not anything else that makes sense.”

This was a lot to think about.

“I can’t do magic like people want because I’m not really doing magic?” Feliciano asked, the first stray thought that came to mind.

“Oh, it’s still magic,” Toris said. “But, yes, different constraints.”

“But no one _else_ in my family does magic!” Feliciano protested. Denial was coming a lot easier than acceptance, and he’d thought of some big ones. “Mamma has always said that the sea-spirit came back for each of us, that we’re _all_ its children, but she hasn’t been to sea since Vespasiana. And sea-spirits aren’t forest spirits!”

“If Master Karpousi hadn’t picked you up, you’d have never thought you were doing magic, either,” Toris pointed out.

“Feliciano,” Ludwig said. “The southern sailors only call the refuge spirits _‘sea-spirits’_ because they don’t know any better. But they watch the coast, too. And they’ve been known to visit people further away than Zaloto.”

_I’m not that special, I’m just human._

“I don’t want to go to war.”

 _“No one,”_ Ludwig told him firmly. “Is going to _make_ you go to war!”

“So the one thing it’s really good for is fighting people,” Feliciano said. It was a valid point, he felt, even if it was also a bit of a final refuge against this seemingly-logical conclusion, which he _was not_ going to accept. “And I’m not going to. No one will pay me to make things pretty and happy, so my magic’s still useless, so none of this matters.”

“It’s _not_ useless,” Toris said. “And I’d like to talk to you about a job, actually.”


	19. Chapter 19

The breeze was blowing up from the southwest, right through Erzenai. The smell of it hit them just moments before Toris saw his city again.

He couldn’t keep the wide smile off his face, and the intensity of the fluttering in his chest caught him by surprise. There was the smell of flowers and herbs from the perfume works, the particular hot-earth scent of the brickmakers’ and potters’ workshops, marked out in physical space by the heat-shimmer over their district. Here were the distilleries, potato and safflower in alternation, just outside the low remnants of Erzenai’s old limestone walls, making alcohol and oil for cooking and for the perfumeries. The horses’ hooves clopped on concrete, here, not packed dirt or cobblestone, and the bronze street markers oriented them through the half-wood and cheap concrete buildings of Erzenai’s outskirts through the wood-and-brick houses and shops of the city proper. The cookshops they passed were frying potatoes and goat and selling them mixed with cider vinegar-preserved summer and harvest greens.

At that point, Toris couldn’t stop himself. It wasn’t dinner yet, so the cookshop fronts were selling off the last of lunch- it wasn’t the best quality, a bit overcooked, but it had been _years_ since he’d had any and it didn’t matter that he wasn’t really hungry, he _wanted_ some.

Ludwig and Feliks eyed him doubtfully as he munched happily on pickled greens, guiding Docinka with just his knees. Erzenai’s cookshops could afford to sell their food to passersby in cup-like pottery bowls, since the pottery shops always had apprentice practice pieces or batches that went bad. Mixed in with a bulk purchase of the worst-quality pottery, the cookshops got a good discount; and then the people of Erzenai could smash the pottery at home, and sell it at a set price per weight to the concrete works. More people got money that way, so everyone was happy.

It was one of those little interconnected things about life in Erzenai that Toris hadn’t realized he’d missed.

They left the streets proper behind for the College Gardens, Erzenai’s sprawling greenbelt around the College, the heart of the city. Here, the paths and small concrete-brick plazas had been swept free of snow, and they passed people out walking- running messages, getting from one place or another, fetching water from the ponds and streams because the well pumps had frozen shut- or congregating in the plazas, practicing.

These last were the mages, the small advanced classes having their practicals sessions in non-dangerous, small-scale magics. Some of the teachers waved to Natalya, Cezar, and Geir as they rode by, and some of the closer ones giving the rest of the party curious looks.

Toris wasn’t sure if he was amused or not that no one recognized him. He didn’t recognize anyone they passed, so if they were people he’d known, it was only fair that they didn’t realize it was him, either.

Then they reached the Grand Plaza, bracketed by the horseshoe of brick buildings whose positions were older than the town, with the bronze-lined reflecting pool in the middle-

-and for a moment, Toris was six again, and seeing it all for the first time, bigger and grander than anything he’d ever seen before, overawed by the fact that he was going to _live_ here, go to school here, make friends here, do _magic_ here.

Nothing had changed, and it was glorious.

He steered Docinka towards the stables without a second thought. Muscle memory had taken over in the familiar surroundings, and Toris was happy for it, too absorbed in being back in Erzenai to really want to focus on anything else.

The stables were the first time he’d evidence of change. They were bigger than the last time he’d been in here, and he thought the stablehands might be different. One of the senior hostlers came out to see them once Natalya, Cezar, and Geir were recognized.

“A productive search, Master Dalca?” he asked, eyeing the rest of the party.

“Not the way we expected,” Cezar told him, and raised his voice just enough so it would carry down the stable corridor. “Find Masters Laurinaitis and Vargas space in the mages’ row, would you?”

Cezar must have been waiting _days_ to say that, and Toris shot his old friend a look when everyone in the vicinity stopped what they were doing to stare.

“Troublemaker,” Toris muttered at him, and Cezar gave him a toothy smile, flashing his overlong incisors.

Natalya whapped him on the arm as the horses shifted uncomfortably.

“If you can’t keep yourself under control, I’ll throw you out myself,” she threatened. “You know the hostlers don’t like it when you do that.”

Cezar shrugged unrepentantly, and settled back in his saddle.

“Toris?” Ludwig asked. He was eyeing the people staring them warily.

“They’re just surprised to see me,” he said, and then looked at the senior hostler. “I don’t need to be in the mages’ row- put me wherever you have space for four horses. Ours-”

He gestured to Feliciano, Ludwig, and Feliks.

“-are herdmates, and don’t like to separated.”

“There will be room on the mages’ row,” the hostler said, tone surprisingly grim, and Toris suppressed a sigh. He’d forgotten how insistent Erzenai’s stables were about status placement. “And your string?”

“They want to know what to do with horses we captured, Feliks,” he told his husband.

Feliks looked around the stables with a critical eye.

“Are they good to their horses here?”

“They’ve always seemed fine to me,” Toris said, well aware that he wouldn’t have known if a stable was good or just average even with an explanation. The hostler was watching them with interest and concentration, clearly trying to place the language they were speaking.

“We can’t really take care of these many,” Feliks said, sounding a bit regretful. “And we haven’t got a lot of use for them. Would they buy them? Or tell us where we could go to sell them?”

“Mister Hostler,” Toris said, switching back into Uteynan. “Have Erzenai’s stables any use of Tougnese warhorses? They’re mage mounts, and we’re looking for a buyer.”

 The senior hostlers had a lot of power within the day-to-day running of the stables and care of the horses. They weren’t authorized to buy on behalf of their employer- that was the Stablemaster’s job. Still, the senior hostlers had pull with the Stablemaster, and the intensely covetous look in the man’s eyes meant good things for the prospects.

“Might have,” he agreed cheerfully. “If it pleases, Master Laurinaitis, I’ll have someone take the string in hand while we get your horses settled, and have the Stablemaster come take a look. I’m sure she can send a message up to your rooms once a decision has been made.”

“That sounds fine,” Toris said, and the senior hostler passed them off to some of the regular hostlers, who took them off to the mages’ row.

The stableboys still hanging around the obviously just-vacated stalls when they arrived stared at the Krasniviy vanner cobs, so large and solid next to the light, mage-trained warhorses in the rest of the area.

“They’re riding _cart horses!_ ” he heard one of the stableboys whisper to another, absolutely scandalized; and then, a second later, Feliks jumping on him.

“Toris!” he demanded. “Toris! I don’t know what he just said, but it was _totally_ not nice, I can tell! What did he say about my babies!”

“He thinks they’re farm animals,” Toris informed him, keeping one amused eye on the stableboy in question. It was the one who’d been taking Pretty into his stall, and he’d cowered just a bit under Feliks’ sudden onslaught of outraged Krasniviy.

 _“Farm animals!”_ Feliks just about shrieked.

“Steward Lukasiewicz is the breeder of these horses,” Toris told the stableboy, and smiled thinly to himself when the stableboy flinched a bit. It wasn’t quite the same trick he’d pulled with Ludwig’s rank- Feliks’s title _was_ actually _‘steward’_ \- but it held much different connotations here. Stewards for high nobility were lords in their own right.

“For Duke Ludwig,” he added, and, yes, everyone was looking much more respectful now. “These are Krasniviy vanner cobs, prized for their low metabolism as much as their weight and height, which allows them to survive pushing through the snow they were bred for, so feed them less than you’re used to. We’ll be down periodically to check that they’re being properly cared for.”

The hostlers chased the stableboys off, now that they’d proven that they couldn’t show decent manners to nobility.

“Pardon for asking,” one of the braver hostlers asked Toris politely. “But how’d you come across horses from Krasnivya? We’ve heard some rumors about a group of them wandering about, lots of conflicting stories why, but nobody’s heard they were horse traders.”

Well, that was interesting; and the Erzenai stables were proving to be as useful for gathering gossip as seeding it to quickly spread.

“They’re not horse traders, it’s a royal progress,” Toris told him. “The Prince of Krasnivya is traveling to Zaloto and making diplomatic stops along the way. Duke Ludwig is his chief advisor, and my employer. We had the misfortune to be waylaid by the Tougnese whose horses we’re hoping to sell to the stables, and separated from the rest of the progress.”

By dinner, Toris was absolutely certain that the College would be abuzz with rumors about how exactly they’d overcome the Tougnese, and why the Tougnese had come for them in the first place, and how he’d managed to fall in with Krasniviy. Cezar had already planned to reveal him, and he would not be surprised to hear that his lightning would be added to the rumors as soon as either he or Natalya heard it.

One of the College’s adjutants- senior students or new graduates who wanted to stay at the College, employed as part-time miscellaneous help- was waiting for them outside the stables. She wore the gold-embroidered purple baldric sash of the Dean’s direct household. A professional, then.

“The Dean sends his apologies, but he will not be able to attend you tonight,” she told them. “He suggests that time can be made in the morning after breakfast for His Highness the Duke and Master Laurinaitis, and at a later time for Masters Arlov and Dalca, should his reading of your field reports warrant it.”

Toris relayed this to Feliks and Ludwig, who agreed with the scheduled meeting, though he seemed a bit confused that anyone would assume that he was expecting to see the Dean at any point, much less immediately.

“You’re the next best thing to royalty,” Toris told him, and wondered if this would sink in to him by the time they got to Zaloto. “That’s what you do for people like you.”

“But it’s not what they think,” Ludwig grumbled, and Toris ignored him in order to inform the adjutant that the Duke was perfectly pleased to see the Dean in the morning, as was he, though he would like to bring Master Vargas along to the meeting, it’s important.

The adjutant agreed to add in Feliciano and showed them to their rooms. Natalya and Cezar had permanent ones, now that their contracts were owned by the College, but the rest of them were shown into the guest wing. A quiet word and some coin to housekeeping got them all in the same suite, Feliks and him in one room together, and dinner sent up instead of waiting for them in the dining hall.

He had to go dig Ludwig out of his room when the food came because he was laboring over a letter.

“I don’t want to make it sound like we were in too much danger,” he insisted over dinner, still holding a pen in his free hand and crossing out parts of the draft.

“You almost _died,_ ” Toris reminded him. “And Feliciano and Feliks accidentally pulled off a bit of legendary magic that any army would slaughter for. More than usual, I mean.”

“I don’t want to alarm them!”

“Too late for that,” Feliks said. “They probably moved out of alarmed like, two hours after you disappeared. It’s been two weeks, so they’ve probably passed _‘terrified panic’_ too.”

“Tell them you’re alive, and where you are,” Feliciano spoke up, to Toris’s surprise. He’d gotten used to the man not speaking directly to Ludwig- but it seemed that the start of an official relationship, mulling over the implications of Toris’s evaluation of his magic, and the invitation to join Erzenai College that he’d extended had done a lot in a little time for his self-evaluation. “It doesn’t have to be anything more than that. My family hasn’t heard from my sister Vespasiana in a long time. Or they hadn’t the last I’d heard from them. All we want to know is that she’s alive and safe, and happy if she managed that.”

“If you get it done in the next hour I can give it to the College messenger service before they close for the night,” Toris said. “And someone can start a ride to Naprah-Vraslau.”

Ludwig looked out the window.

“But it’s dark out.”

“And Uteyna actually has decent roads,” he said. “Just do what Feliciano said. You can alarm them in person once they get here.”

Apparently that was enough impetus to get Ludwig to finish the letter, and Toris took it down to the messengers directly, picking up the news in the message office. There was a big foreign story that he just _had_ to share posted on the news board, and the messengers were executing their unofficial duty as the College’s gossip clearing-house with diligence and acuity. Sure enough, he was the biggest topic of the evening, and that seemed to have happened even without any mention of lightning.

Well, it would get out soon enough.

“Hey, Feliciano,” he said as he walked back into the suite’s common room. Someone had come by and taken away the plates and what was left of dinner. “There’s some interesting news you might like to hear.”

“Did something happen in Zaloto?”

“No- Neima,” Toris told them, taking a seat on the couch next to Feliks. “The messenger office posting said that Arthur of Sceapbridge stormed his brother’s palace just a couple of days after we left and tore a swath of destruction through court. He killed his brother, seized the throne, and now Neima is allies with Tougnon. Nobody can figure out _why_ Tougnon, or knows why the new king did it.”

“Oh,” Feliciano said. “Should we- tell someone?”

“I was going to tell the College about the mage slavings anyway,” Toris said. “They _really_ weren’t supposed to have done that, and the Colleges could take it out of Neima’s hide for daring. It looks like King Arthur got there first, though.”

“I bet Prince Alfred wrote him,” Feliciano said. “He and Prince Matthieu are both mages. Even if the old king forbade the court from talking about it, they were treating Prince Alfred as family. They wouldn’t check his mail. And he always said that his father was going to do something stupid about his ransom contract, anyway.”

“Prince Matthieu was at court? I don’t remember hearing anything about that.”

Feliciano shrugged.

“He’s shy. It took him a long time to do anything more than say hello to me, but he’d be in the same room quietly often enough. Prince Alfred came over the first day to introduce himself. They’re friends.”

That was not something Toris had been expecting to hear from Feliciano, not after the way the man had been so intimidated by the Krasniviy delegation, especially Ludwig and Prince Ivan.

“You _personally know_ the Princes of Neima and Tougnon?” he asked, just to make sure.

“We were the only ones at court with ransom contracts, and some of the only mages,” Feliciano told him. “I wouldn’t have talked to them, but Prince Alfred is really outgoing. He likes making friends.”

He paused, and his expression slowly turned wondering.

“And we _were_ friends,” he said, sounding astonished. “He came by when court started talking about, when you came- he wanted to see if I was okay! Oh, but I- I couldn’t talk to him.”

He sounded so sad about that that Toris suggested that he send the prince a letter, which got a panicky refusal that he more associated with Feliciano. He decided he’d suggest it again, later; and even resort to reminding Feliciano that connections to royalty were nothing to be squandered, and he should network when the opportunity presented itself.

“College _s?_ ” Feliks asked, emphasizing the plural.

“There’s not just Erzenai,” Toris told him. “There are nine of them that make up the Collegiate- that’s sort of the governing force for mages. Erzenai is just the oldest and most famous. No one even knows how old it is- we don’t have any records, not even in passed-down stories. There’s Castelsola in Zaloto, Asaphfeld in Neima, Mandun and Rizohu in Qiansung- but I guess Rizohu is in Saiha now- Koyya in Gazi Shehir, Gjelsehus in the Fulgrad, and Revelle in Tougnon. There used to be eleven Colleges, but Naprah was destroyed at the start of the wars, and no one’s really sure where Zharevsta was, besides that it was up north somewhere in the lands that Uteyna and Neima fought over. Most of the modern countries got their start from a College, but the Fulgrad and Uteyna are the only ones that are still centered on the Colleges, so it’s us and Gjelsehus that are the largest. Though _‘central power’_ falls to Gjeslehus more by default than purpose, like here.”

“This is the center of government?” Ludwig asked, surprised.

“Well, the College represents Uteyna to other countries,” Toris said. “And Erzenai provides some law enforcement duties- you remember I told you that Erzenai has a lot of searching parties for new mages? That’s what they’re for officially, but everyone knows that if a party runs into a problem the local constabulary or equivalent can’t handle, then they become responsible for it. That’s why Natalya and the others came to investigate the Tougnese mages in the fort. It was part of their job.”

“Does it _work?_ ” Ludwig asked. He didn’t seem very convinced.

“You’ve ridden through most of it,” Toris reminded him. “Uteyna is the safest, most peaceful place south of the taiga, excepting maybe parts of the Fulgrad and Lapsara, and _usually_ Naprah-Vraslau.”

“You said that Naprah used to be a College.”

“It was part of what started the wars,” Toris said. “It’s been so long that we don’t know how it all happened for certain, if anyone ever did, and by now that’s not why people are fighting any longer. All we know for certain is that Zharevsta was disbanded- we don’t know why- and they all came south to Naprah and Erzenai and Gjelsehus. Naprah got the best of Zharevsta, who were _the_ best at the time, but there was… some sort of plot. Some of the stories say it was an extension of what happened to disband Zharevsta, some of them say that the best of Zharevsta were bitter about the loss of their College and wanted to take over Naprah, some say that the plot was already afoot in Naprah and the Zharevsta mages just blew it open, either trying to expose it or trying to execute it.”

“Plot against who?” Feliks asked.

“Neima,” Feliciano said, and shrugged. “Erzenai and Uteyna. Gjelsehus and the Fulgrad. Qiansung. Tougnon. Bochec. Old Tien Ninh. Naprah itself. Zharevsta, or just the mages of Zharevsta in Erzenai and Gjelsehus. Everyone claims something different. Whatever supports what they want at the moment the best. History says that Neima, Uteyna, and the Fulgrad fought first, though.”

“Uteyna used to go all the way up to the taiga,” Toris said. “And a lot further west, into what’s now Neima. The Fulgrad didn’t get very involved until Neima had crushed the old empire- where the Toungense took us? That was one of the old border forts from the last years of that war. Then the Fulgrad had Neima as a neighbor, and _they_ started fighting. Now nobody owns the land up there. It’s all unclaimed, and mostly forest. You go up there if you want to disappear. Anyway, while Neima and Uteyna were finishing up, the last remnants of Naprah finally fell apart completely, and then Bochec and old Tien Ninh started fighting over the land they left. Neima only got involved because the fighting was spilling over their borders. Tougnon and Qiansung did too, for the same reasons, but then they ended up fighting each other after Qiansung destroyed old Tien Ninh to defend their borders, and _both_ countries ended up as conquering empires, and- well, you get the idea. Everything kept spiraling out of control, alliances fall in and out of favor, factions will be in stalemates for decades and then suddenly everything shifts and it breaks-”

He stopped. Something awful had occurred to him.

“Toris?” Feliks asked, worried.

“I thought Qiansung marching on the Tougnese capital was the latest broken stalemate,” he said. “But Tougnon just allied with Neima, and there were Tougnese war mages occupying the old fort. With extensive- and pretty reckless- magic use, they could have gotten there within the time between the alliance forming and our capture. Tougnon took Bochec not long ago, and so long as they hold the capital- and with Neiman help I think they could- and agree to ignore anything Neima does for the time being, and then _help out_ once they’ve repelled Qiansung- Neima could take us, and then they and Tougnon could surround and take Naprah-Vraslau, and it would be the strongest coalition in the war in centuries.”

Those were dire thoughts, and he’d have to notify the Dean when they saw him in the morning.

“We might have to be ready to leave for the east. Very, very quickly.”


	20. Chapter 20

Kiku Honda was a bit put-off when he arrived at Erzenai and was told that the Dean wouldn’t be able to see him until morning. He’d been hoping, _really_ hoping, that he’d be able to turn over the item that he’d been sent to procure.

He’d accepted it because it had seemed like a relatively easy job- the Dean had already done all the research, and knew exactly where what he wanted most likely was. The information that Dean Sorensson been able to put together strongly suggested that it was in Gjelsehus town, stored away in off-site College archives that no one had looked at in at least a century, so there wasn’t likely to be much security on them.

So Kiku had taken his partial up front pay, and gone to Gjelsehus, and found the College’s off-site archives even less of a challenge than had been suggested. It was clear that _nobody_ ever came here, but for the cursory monthly inspection to make sure that the building hadn’t burned down or been obviously broken into. The College didn’t store books here, just miscellaneous physical items that didn’t really need upkeep- old gifts that they hadn’t sold off yet, but mostly things that were already broken or served no apparent use.

The real problem had been that the off-site archives had so much _stuff_ to go through. He’d spent longer than he’d thought he would carefully prying open crates, and lifting the tops off boxes, and picking locks, looking for what had been described to him- a livery collar of gold plaques, inset with the purest and brightest of sapphires and diamonds, the badge an intricate sun medallion.

Eventually he’d found it, stowed it carefully away in his packs, and started back towards Erzenai.

He’d had the dreams every night since. They were vivid, coherent things, and Kiku found them extremely troubling.

They were all of the same place- some light, airy complex of stone buildings with great glass windows, impossibly clear or colored, seated at the top of a rock outcrop that soared out of the treeline far below, seeming more like part of a mountain than a jut of rock.

The first couple of dreams had been simply watching a woman as she ate and read and walked quiet hallways in these buildings- Kateryna, he’d learned her name was, and she wore many layers of black robes with copper lining and thin edging embroidery that made her blue eyes and short blonde hair stand out.

She also wore the livery collar, and that was the first thing about the dreams that troubled Kiku; because it was one thing to dream about something you’d procured, but another thing all together to start making up _coherent stories_ about them.

Even if they were rather boring, just work-a-day things.

The second troubling thing that had happened in the dreams was learning that she was the Dean of a mage College- a strange pale man in silvery armor stopped her in the hallway, a couple of dreams in, with a yell of _“Dean Braginski!”_  

That dream had ended there, and the next night it had picked up right where it had left off, and Kiku learned that the man in the silvery armor was called Gilbert, and that he was the Captain of the Guard. He’d never heard of a College have their own guard force, but he also had a sinking suspicion that these dreams were set in the past.

About the time that he’d admitted that to himself, he couldn’t exactly think of them as just dreams, any longer. For the next couple of days, whenever he saw a temple or a shrine, he stopped and asked the gods why they were giving him with these- these-

_Visions._

Dean Kateryna Braginski and Captain Gilbert Beilschmidt seemed to be the authorities in the College. The dreams- visions- _dreams_ \- stopped following Kateryna around and instead turned into short scenes of her and Gilbert together, which became increasingly stressed as the nights went on. Kiku didn’t have the context for the names they threw around or the situations they mentioned and never explained, this clearly being shared knowledge between them, but he managed to puzzle out that Kateryna’s College was undergoing a serious fracture, spurred on by some of the senior mages. He was still hazy on _why_ exactly there was a fracture, and why these people were at the head of it, but from Kateryna and Gilbert’s sharp opinions he gathered that Marcus was controlling with a brutish temper, Thieuderiks was cold with a cruel streak when he felt he’d been crossed, and Euphrosyne felt herself both infinitely superior to everyone and constantly cheated out of her rightful authority and prestige. There was a fourth faction, once that Kateryna and Gilbert didn’t say anything more on than that he was very strange-  seemed to consist entirely of someone called Laumevaitis, which might have been a name or might have been a title, Kiku wasn’t sure. It sounded like they used it as both. Nothing was ever said about him holding official power, but they sounded wary of him all the same.

Two nights before he returned to Erzenai, Kiku dreamed a war in the College. Fighting had broken out between Marcus’s faction and Thieuderiks’s faction, and Euphrosyne and her faction were throwing together whatever they could carry and fleeing, fighting anyone they came across in their rush to escape and making the situation worse.

Kiku heard all of this second-hand, brought as news from a bloody Gilbert in battered and scorched armor, leading a group of people loyal to them past the barricades Kateryna had set up around her office and the attached temple- this College was full of Zealots, interesting, but it explained the sun medallion badge on the livery collar and Kateryna’s robes. She was Head Priestess of the College, he learned as she led an abbreviated service, in addition to being the Dean.

Kateryna and Gilbert had argued once it was over about what to do, but they were cut off before they got very far by a booming, echoing voice Kiku hadn’t heard before.

 _ALL YOU WISH IS TO FIGHT,_ it said. _YOU HAVE NO RESPECT FOR THIS PLACE, NOR EACH OTHER, NOR YOURSELVES, NOR THOSE WHO GRANTED THAT WE COULD BE HERE._

“Not true, Laumevaitis,” Gilbert had muttered; and Kiku understood then why they’d called the man _‘very strange’_ , because the next thing from the voice wasn’t words but a long, deep bell tone, held far longer than anyone could and still breathe.

Mist rose from the stones of the floor, human figures forming in it-

And then the singing.

Kiku had never heard anything like it in his life, and it was _the_ most disturbing thing about the dreams, because as much as it unnerved him, it hit the people he was dreaming much worse. The people in the temple fell to their knees, clutched at their heads, started moaning or keening or babbling or muttering snatches of holy texts. Kateryna sat down heavily on the floor and started crying; Gilbert stood rigid and stared hard at the wall, jaw clenched, as the rest of the College filled with shrieking, under the singing.

It seemed to go on forever, and then the singing finally stopped. Kateryna and Gilbert ventured out past the barricades to see what had happened, and Kiku had never wanted to see anything less in his life-

But there were no bodies, none of the carnage he’d expected from such shrieking. That was almost worse than seeing blood and viscera everywhere. The rest of the College was just completely abandoned of signs of human habitation; until, near the front doors, Marcus jumped out of nowhere and fell on Kateryna. Gilbert fumbled for his- sword? It was such a long blade though, and the same silver as his armor, the edge on it had to have been magical- as Kateryna struggled with the other man, who seemed wild with desperation and the aftermath of the singing. Her robes tore in places under his hands, and after a few long seconds, just as Gilbert found the hilt of his sword, Kateryna kicked him away into the doors. The livery collar ripped away from her neck, Marcus’s right hand still clutching at it, and Gilbert raised his sword.

Kiku had thought he was going to strike, but instead it sliced through empty air to point at Marcus, and Gilbert blasted him back and the doors open with a storm of lightning, sending the other mage skidding down the vast stone plaza in front of the building.

Amazingly, it didn’t kill Marcus. He stopped just before the long stairs down and staggered to his feet, still holding the collar, and fled.

Gilbert moved to go after him, but Kateryna stopped him.

“Gilbert, no,” she said, voice immensely tired. “Leave him be. Zharevsta is finished.”

_Zharevsta?_

Kiku might have been a rouge-for-hire and started his job young, but he’d had enough basic education to know that name.

He’d been dreaming _Zharevsta?_

“What about us, then?” Gilbert demanded. “Laumevaitis called up the spirits of Dausos and the taiga- they won’t let us stay here! He’s just as well cursed this place in the name of the Sun, bringing his family into it like this! Well- _you_ could stay, you’re High Priestess-”

“Not if what’s left of our people can’t,” Kateryna said. “The others fled south- we’ll go north. My family is there, and enough of yours have moved up there with them and the others to the outpost settlement to log and mine and harvest the ice that it can be home for you, too.”

“ _‘Enough’_ of mine,” Gilbert replied bitterly. “My only sister and her kids, you mean?”

“There might have been dozens of Beilschmidts here,” she told him. “But I know very well that you hated _all_ of them. Liutgard is the only one you ever liked, and don’t even _try_ to pretend that you don’t dote on your nephew, or that he utterly adores you. I’ve seen the two of you together.”

“Well, that’s just because Liutgard’s husband and up and ran away back to Asaphfeld,” he said. “An uncle’s the best he has.”

“So don’t deprive him of it,” Kateryna said. “Help me lead the ones who are left north.”

“Beats me _why_ anyone would _want_ to live in Krasnivya,” Gilbert muttered, evidently giving in. “It’s cold and there’s too much snow. What’s the damn point of having nine months of sun if it can’t even warm the place up, huh? _‘Blessed by the Sun’_ my _ass._ ”

That night’s dream ended there, with the dawn, as always, leaving Kiku more shaken than usual. He’d done his best to get to Erzenai that night, but hadn’t quite managed it.

The last night before Erzenai, in an inn, he dreamed of Marcus. The man met up with the remnants of his faction that managed to flee the spirits, and they went south and east, almost following the livery collar more than him. Of all of them, Marcus had held up least well against the singing, and didn’t seem to have totally regained his- well, his sanity.

After a long time, they arrived in Gjelsehus. The other College gave them a lukewarm welcome at best, made worse when Marcus tried to insist on being called _‘Dean Vargas’_. He was immediately shut down by the Dean of Gjelsehus, and Kiku watched and heard as the mages of this College very pointedly called him _Master_ Vargas whenever they had the chance. Kiku saw it wear away at the man, and saw him take it out on the family he tried to build, until finally, as the wars the rest of the Zharevsta diaspora had gotten mixed up in started to encroach on Gjelsehus and the Fulgrad, Marcus’s children packed up and left for Zaloto to live with their mother’s family.

Marcus got even _more_ bitter, if that were possible, and got himself killed in the wars. The Dean of Gjelsehus quietly claimed the livery collar of Zharevsta. Time sped by, and Kiku saw the collar’s passage from pride of place in the Dean’s office, to hidden away to keep it from being stolen, to the story of it being lost, to it being mistaken, in a thorough cleaning of the College, for an ill-thought out gift, and packed away in the archives that he’d taken it from not so long ago.

Kiku woke that morning even more bewildered, and only a few hours’ ride from Erzenai. _Why_ had he been shown the story of how the collar had ended up where it had? What was the _point?_ Was he supposed to tell someone? Dean Sorensson, maybe? But what was _he_ supposed to do about it?

He took the ride into Erzenai at a leisurely pace, and hunted down the town’s sole Zealot temple, meant for the Zaloti traders, once he arrived. He hid the livery collar under his clothes and tried to calm the irrational voice that said that the few Zaloti here were staring at him because he was obviously Saihan, and out of place; _not_ because they could tell that he was hiding something of a sacred artifact on his person.

Still, when it looked like the temple priest was about to work up the nerve to come ask him what he was doing here, Kiku fled. Just in case.

And now he’d been told that Dean Sorensson was too busy to see him, he’d have to come by in the morning.

Kiku stuffed the collar into the bottom of his bag, and kicked the bag under the bed. He’d come to the end of the story, hadn’t he? There shouldn’t be any more dreams.

Of course there was another dream.

He’d been expecting more with Kateryna and Gilbert, but he was back in Zharevsta. It had a peculiar feeling of total emptiness, while also being quietly filled. Kiku wasn’t entirely sure with what, but it was akin to the feeling of the best temples, where you walked in and it really seemed like a spiritual place.

Well, Zharevsta had been a sort of temple complex, hadn’t it? They’d rated enough to have a High Priestess, and not just some detached clergy on a far-away posting from Zaloto.

Come to think of it- wasn’t there only supposed to be _one_ High Priest? In the High Temple in Zaloto? Zharevsta must have been extremely important, if they rated a second High Temple.

Wait- how could you have _two_ High Temples? Wasn’t the point that there was only one?

He was still pondering this when a priest wandered into the same hallway as him. He was wearing familiar black-and-copper robes, except that his were topped with a sort of heavy apron of brilliant blue cloth, embroidered with bright white and gold.

Kiku waited patiently for the dream to start following this new man around, but the priest had stopped in the hallway and was staring in his general direction. Kiku looked over his shoulder to see if there was something or someone behind him, but it was still empty.

The priest coughed.

“It is usually considered polite to introduce yourself,” he said. He had a pleasant, quietly-calm voice that registered with Kiku before the content of the words did.

“Oh,” he said, surprised. “You can see me?”

“Should I not be able to?”

“I have dreamed this place before,” Kiku told him. “No could see me then, but it _was_ all visions of history. Are you not a vision?”

“I do not believe so,” the priest said. “Forgive me, but I would think that any visions would be for me. I _am_ a priest.”

Kiku nodded at his vestments.

“I can see.”

The priest seemed strangely embarrassed by this statement.

“It is only that this-”

He was fiddling with the apron.

“-is reserved for the High Priest, which I am not. I thought that perhaps this was a sign, or something. I had not thought myself so full of hubris to imagine it for myself, though I suppose that that could be a sign of the fault of itself.”

“Perhaps,” Kiku agreed. “But this _is_ a High Temple.”

The priest looked around.

“I know the High Temple,” he said. “This is not it.”

“Not in Zaloto,” Kiku told him. “The other one, in Zharevsta.”

“I have never heard of such a thing.”

“I have been dreaming it for more than two weeks,” Kiku said. “There was- is?- a second Zealot High Temple in Zharevsta, abandoned when the College fell to infighting and exile. The last High Priestess fled to Krasnivya.”

“Simply for including that,” the priest said. “I should think you a trickster spirit.”

He almost wanted to take professional pride in that.

“I know that _‘Krasnivya’_ is the beginning of many tall tales and stories meant to excite with the exotic,” he said. “But I assure you, I have seen it as I said.”

The priest sighed.

“I would like better to not believe you,” he said. “I have gathered enough trouble for myself from the High Temple in Zaloto. But there is an air about this place…”

He trailed off, but Kiku knew what he meant.

“I am Kiku Honda, of Saiha,” he introduced himself.

The priest smiled a little.

“Cristoforo Vargas, of Zaloto.”

_Well._

“A relation of Marcus Vargas, I presume?” Kiku asked, getting an inkling of what was going on and not liking it _one bit._

The gods were not supposed to pay attention to people like _him!_ That was for mages, and kings, and priests! People who already lived adventure-filled or spiritual lives, and were in a position to do something about it! What proper god ever needed a rouge?

“Who?” Cristoforo asked, sounding polite but confused. “Not as far as I am aware, no.”

Through mutual, silent agreement, they began to wander the halls together. Kiku had picked up just enough from the visions to have a rough idea of where things were, at least within a certain area of the College, so Cristoforo ended up unobtrusively following him.

Eventually, they came across a quite large, bemused-looking man standing in the front entrance foyer, looking at the wall carvings and the architecture.

He appeared to cheer up when he caught sight of them.

“Ah!” he said happily. “So there are others here! Do you know what this place is?”

“Zharevsta,” Kiku told him.

“I have never heard of it,” the man told them. “Where is it?”

“North?” Cristoforo hazarded, and the large man chuckled.

“I know _‘north’_ ,” he said. “And there is no Zharevsta in Krasnivya. I would know.”

And here was Krasnivya again. Kiku examined him closely, noting a few familiarities of face and build.

“Braginski?” he asked.

“Yes!” the man said, sounding pleasantly surprised. “Yes! Ivan Braginski! Have we met?”

“No,” Kiku told him. “But I have seen more of this place than you.”

Cristoforo was giving him a rather searching, suspicious look, and Kiku elected to ignore it for the moment. He didn’t really want to explain their lost family history to them, gods or no.

Ivan and Cristoforo fell to talking as they all moved on. Kiku was unsurprised to hear that Krasnivya was almost exclusively Zealot- he supposed that the sudden arrival of a group of powerful Zealots, complete with their own High Priestess, could do that to a people, especially one that sounded as small as Kateryna had implied with the words _‘outpost settlement’_.

And then they came upon yet another man, seated quietly on the few low steps leading up the libraries, gazing at the books within with a touch of awe.

“Toris!” Ivan exclaimed. _“Toris!”_

The mans’ head turned, and he quickly stood.

“Prince Ivan!”

This Braginski was a prince? Kateryna’s family had done well for themselves, it seemed.

“We have not seen you or Ludwig in _weeks!_ ” Ivan told him. “What _happened_ to you?”

“Old employer of mine,” Toris said with a grimace. “Who wasn’t happy that I ran to Krasnivya. I really do apologize, Prince Ivan- I wasn’t keeping a sharp enough lookout for mage traps. But we got away, all three of us, and we’re in Erzenai. Ludwig wrote a letter for you tonight, and I gave it to a messenger with instructions to head towards Naprah-Vraslau to find you. Have you left the city?”

“Of course not!” Ivan snapped. “We were searching for you and Ludwig, and then we were snowed in, and now that we have convinced our host that we see much worse weather every day in Krasnivya, we have _finally_ gotten away. We have managed something less of a proper full day’s travel down the road you chose for us, because we have been asking for word of you along the way. Raivis and Erzsébet and Timo have been ranging out into the woods and surrounding fields- they are _furious,_ and scared, Raivis especially!”

“We weren’t _trying_ to get caught,” Toris protested weakly. “And now you can tell them we’re safe, and where we are.”

 _“Oh?”_ Ivan asked. “And I am supposed to hope that they will accept _‘I dreamt of Toris in a strange place, he assures me they are alive’_ as proof enough?”

“It’s not a dream, it’s a vision,” Toris informed him. “I know _I’m_ here, and I’m satisfied _you’re_ here, and this place feels like somewhere holy. And anyway-”

He pointed at Cristoforo.

“ _He’s_ the High Priest of the High Temple in Zaloto.”

Cristoforo sighed.

“I am _not,_ ” he said. “I know what I am wearing, but I did not chose this. I am a minor priest, very junior, whom the High Temple would like nothing more than to get rid of. They have sidelined me into taking on my local parish, and hope to wear me down by forcing me to administer to the desperately poor, the outright destitute, the prostitutes, and the criminals. If that does not work, I have no doubt that they will send me off to the mainland, to do missionary work in the wars, in the hopes that it will kill me.”

Ivan looked at him with renewed interest.

“That sounds like a story.”

Cristoforo gave him a wry little smile.

“A priest who claims to have some personal knowledge of his god- at least one so traditionally distant as the Sun- is hardly a friend to the High Temple, even if he is quiet about speaking of his revelations.”

“So you _deserve_ those vestments,” Toris said.

“Just because I have visions does not make me qualified!” he protested. “Even those from my clerical year who looked down at me, and the teachers who talked amongst each other not quiet enough, would agree on that! And not just because of who I am.”

“And who are you?”

“Cristoforo Vargas,” he said. “Born as destitute and destined to be a despised as those they have assigned me.”

“You wouldn’t happen to know a _Feliciano_ Vargas, would you?” Toris asked. “A mage? He sings-”

Cristoforo inhaled sharply, and grabbed Toris’s nearest wrist beseechingly.

“My brother,” he said. “You have news of my brother? Is he well? Is he being taken care of? We have heard nothing from Neima since the king’s men came and learned we could not pay his ransom, and just today there was word from the docks that the old king was overthrown and the new one did it my destroying much of his court, with magic- the king’s guards would contain mages and the mainlanders have been making Feliciano fight, we know that much-”

“He’s _fine,_ ” Toris assured him quickly. “He wasn’t even in Neima. I work for the Duke of Krasnivya, _he_ bought Feliciano’s contract and we had left court by the time Arthur of Sceapbridge killed his brother. We had a scare with the Tougnese mages who were after me about two weeks ago, when we were separated from Prince Ivan and the others, but we got away. Your brother saved the Duke, and voided his contract. He’s free. We- the Krasniviy- we’re on pilgrimage to Zaloto. He’s traveling with us; he’s coming home.”

Cristoforo took a ragged breath, tears welling up.

“Thank you,” he said quietly. “Thank you, thank you, thank the Sun. Feliciano’s ransom was so high, we knew we could never pay it- we thought we’d never see him again, to hear that he’s coming _home-_ ”

They let Cristoforo cry quietly for a few minutes, uninterrupted. Kiku felt uncomfortable about witnessing such a personal thing from a stranger, yet also oddly moved. It wasn’t a very pleasant combination of sensations, and he was glad to take the lead again as they got back to wandering.

This time, though, he had a destination in mind. The libraries were near the actual High Temple, and the High Temple had a thin stone finger sticking out of the side of the rock outcropping, granting a magnificent view of the surrounding area. The earliest visions had shown him Kateryna out on the end of that finger, seated in a low-backed wooden chair, being quiet in the warmth and light of her god. He’d like to see it again, and he thought that it might make Cristoforo feel better.

He was only a little surprised to find that the finger was already occupied. He’d been half-expecting it, and the real surprise that it wasn’t one but _two_ people- one seated in Kateryna’s chair, the other sitting on the ground, head in the first’s lap.

He heard Cristoforo gasp slightly, and the man rushed forwards.

“Feliciano!”

The one in the chair turned with a smile, and Kiku startled.

Cristoforo’s brother was wearing Zharevsta’s livery collar.

“I’m all right, I’m all right,” he reassured the priest, and tugged on his sleeve. “Cristino, Cristino- _listen._ ”

The brothers fell silent, but Kiku didn’t hear anything. There wasn’t even wind, here.

“Ivan-”

And this was the other one, come up to them while they were distracted by Cristoforo. Kiku wondered who this could be. Kateryna had been blonde and blue-eyed like he was-

“I am _displeased_ with you, Ludwig Beilschmidt.”

Well, he wouldn’t have guessed _that._

“We weren’t trying to get kidnapped,” Ludwig said. “And I’ve sent you a letter.”

“Still,” Ivan said, and there was a moment where they simply looked at each other before Ivan grabbed him a short, strong hug.

“What was I supposed to do, if I lost my Court Magnate?” the prince asked him, pulling away.

“Ask King Surinder for help,” Ludwig suggested.

“It would not be the same.”

Ludwig didn’t seem to have anything to say to that, and looked over at Kiku.

“I see you found someone.”

“Kiku Honda,” Ivan introduced him, then nodded at the brothers, down at the end of the finger. “And Cristoforo-”

“Feliciano’s younger brother, yes, I know. He’s talked about them.”

“I don’t think they’re supposed to be doing that,” Toris said doubtfully, and Kiku looked back at the brothers. Feliciano had sat the right way around in the chair again, and Cristoforo was on the ground beside him. They were staring at the sun.

“He was doing that before,” Ludwig said. “I don’t really get it, and I can’t do it, but if you- sit really quietly, the light…”

He trailed off.

“It what?” Toris asked.

“It _talks,_ ” Ludwig answered, sounding absolutely mortified.

Ivan made a sort of thoughtful, prolonged hum, and blinked up at the sun. Ludwig and Toris were casting sideways looks at each other, but didn’t talk; and in the silence Kiku could _just_ about hear someone whispering-

Oh no he was _not._

He had been stuck with these visions for _two weeks,_ and he had been asking the gods for answers, and if was the Zealot Sun then- _fine,_ his job had been co-opted into some sort of divine quest, but that didn’t mean _he_ was any part of this, not at all. He was _not_ going to listen-

-and he woke up in the darkness of his room, quite suddenly, without feeling even a trace hint of tiredness.

Grumpily, he got out of bed, and fished out the livery collar. He considered throwing it out the window- but he’d agreed to bring it back to Dean Sorensson, and he had his honor. It would go to Erzenai College in the morning, and then the Zealot Sun could get the _Dean_ tied up in all this.


	21. Chapter 21

With the light there, whispering, it hadn’t seemed terribly important to talk to Cristoforo.

But now, blinking awake in the dark of the night-turning-morning, questions for his younger brother were crashing all through Feliciano’s head.

How was their mother? Had they heard from Vespasiana? How was Cristoforo getting along in the priesthood? Was Carlino apprenticed, did he have work, had the money been enough? Were Lovino and Antonio doing all right? What about Santiana?

None of those, though, were quite as loud as the… dream, vision, however it was. Feliciano felt warm, and a bit spacey, except for the oddly hollow, hurting weight, or lack of weight, against his chest. He had no idea what that fancy necklace had been, but the light had told him it was _his,_ told him he needed to go to Zharevsta, it was past time that the other High Temple was re-established, once the College and the Temple had been almost one and the same but not again, times had changed, but the right people had been found and were in the right place, finally-

Somehow, it made perfect sense to get out of his bed, wrapping himself in the top blanket, go over to Ludwig’s room, and snuggle up next to him. It was grounding, and warm, and everything felt okay again.

And then he had to wake back up.

There was morning light filtering in through the windows, and light, sunlight, the Sun, _oh **no-**_

“What are you doing in my bed?”

_He’d had a divine vision._

He felt, rather than heard, Ludwig sigh, and the bed moved as the other man got up. Feliciano tried to burrow further into the blanket he’d brought. If he just never got up-

“The sunlight isn’t _that_ bad. It’s not even reflecting off ice and new snow here.”

 _Yes the sunlight **was** that bad! _It had _talked_ to him, that whispering had been the _Sun,_ the _Sun_ wanted him-

Feliciano couldn’t help the high, thin keen of- of- of everything being _too much._

The blanket was pulled down. The room was mostly dark again- Ludwig had closed the curtains. Now, he was knelt down beside the bed.

“Feliciano?” he asked gently.

The sound he made was not even remotely coherent, but it got the proper sentiments across.

Ludwig sighed, and went from kneeling to sitting, resting his head atop the mattress. Feliciano reached out of his blanket cocoon to pet his hair.

“I just,” Feliciano said quietly, sniffing. Petting Ludwig’s hair was calming. “ _Yesterday_ you all said that I was actually really _good_ at magic, and there was the _‘spirit-born’_ thing, and Toris said he’d sponsor me into the College and that Erzenai would have to be really stupid not to take me, _and then_ there was the whole dream thing, and _the Sun_ told me that I- it wants me- _me!-_ to be Dean of _Zharevsta!_ I don’t even know where Zharevsta _is!_ And I’ve never been part of a College, I don’t know _how!_ ”

“I know,” Ludwig murmured.

“It’s just _too much-_ ”

“No,” Ludwig interrupted him, turning his head. “Feliciano. _I_ know how. I know how to manage and grow an estate. A College isn’t that different, especially one that needs rebuilding. You’re going to need an agricultural and industrial base, and capital to get started, and recruiters to invite people to come be a part of the College or settle around it, to help support it. I’m not a mage, I can’t be Dean of mages’ College. But I can help you. The, ah-”

He got a bit flustered, suddenly.

“That’s what the Sun told me to do.”

There was a moment where they just looked at each other, Feliciano trying to additionally wrap his head around _the Duke of Krasnivya has been delegated to be my advisor;_ and then it was broken by pounding on the door.

Ludwig’s eyes widened, and he apparently just registered that he’d simply sat down and let Feliciano pet his hair- and Feliciano realized at the exact same moment that he’d just _done_ it, unthinkingly, like in the vision- and a second later Ludwig jerked back, turning red, and banged loudly into the bedside dresser.

 _“Finish up the sex and come have breakfast!”_ Feliks hollered at them through the door, and Feliciano giggled- just a bit- at the way Ludwig looked like he wanted to hide under the bed and never come out.

“We’re supposed to see the Dean this morning,” Feliciano remembered.

“Yes- right-” Ludwig blustered, and stood up very suddenly. “Of course. The Dean. I- you- well- you weren’t in your- and we are- I suppose it makes sense that they’d think- but they know me- they should know that- _I_ should tell him-”

This man did an awful lot of blushing, Feliciano was learning. And he was… amusing, in a really cute way, when he was flustered, even if it was probably no fun for him.

He realized that it made him want to hold Ludwig’s hands and kiss him until he calmed down.

 _“Clothes,”_ Ludwig concluded, with feeling and an extremely serious look on his face.

Feliciano really couldn’t help it this time. He rolled over onto his back, blanket falling loose across Ludwig’s bed, and just _laughed._

“That’s not,” Ludwig said, sounding confused and defeated. “That wasn’t funny?”

Feliciano rolled the opposite way, off the bed, and stood up. Too much had happened over the last day for him to care very much, at the moment, that this was probably really too assertive for nobility.

“It’s nice that you’re supposed to help me,” he told Ludwig, smiling as he took the other man’s hands. “I wouldn’t be able to do it by myself, Ludwig, I really wouldn’t. I’d need you. Or someone like you.”

Ludwig looked a bit shocked, for some reason.

“Oh?”

“That’s why it’s nice that it’s supposed to be you,” Feliciano said. “Because I like you.”

He leaned forward- and up, because Ludwig was _tall-_ and kissed him on the cheek before leaving.

Ludwig was flustered all through breakfast, and couldn’t quite look at him, not even when Feliciano smiled at him.

 _Especially_ not then.

And he realized, as they finished breakfast in their rooms, and went up to see the Dean, that the warm sunny feeling from the dream vision hadn’t really gone away. It was still there in his chest, all glowy, making him bold enough to deliberately bump up against Ludwig in the hallway, and keep smiling at him.

Feliciano was certain it would wear off, and all the thoughts about how he was going to lose this, how he wasn’t good enough, how someone was making a big mistake because none of this could really be _him_ would come back; but for now he was alone in his head and happy.

The Dean’s office was on the top floor on the main building, at the end of a short hallway. He, Ludwig, and Toris got to the top of the stairs only to see a familiar face.

Kiku Honda’s entire body drooped when he saw them, shoulders sloping down and chin falling to his chest in defeat.

He thrust the bundled cloth he was holding at Feliciano. Surprised, he took it, and unwrapped it.

It was the heavy necklace thing from the dream. His hand came up to his chest, unbidden, to touch the spot where the golden sun medallion had lain heavy, the night before; and the Dean’s office door opened.

They all looked up.

Dean Sorensson looked very tired- the expressionlessness was telling, to someone who’d grown up around people too worn down by life to find time to sleep- and Feliciano could believe that he’d been too busy to see them the night before. In fact, it looked like he was too busy, _period._ He should take a couple of days off to sleep and get in some relaxation time.

The Dean looked at them, and then Kiku, and then the cloth and the heavy necklace, and turned on his heel, not bothering to close the door behind him. He crossed his office and, very deliberately, with a lot of unspoken emotion, clicked the locks on the big picture window and pushed it open.

He put his hands on the windowsill and leaned out, face towards the sun, and yelled:

 _“ARE YOU HAPPY NOW, YOU GREAT FLAMING BASTARD?!”_  


End file.
